For the pupils the results were that they learnt eagerly, always begged to have additional lessons on winter evenings, and were quite free in class--which, in my conviction and experience, is the chief condition of successful teaching. Between the teachers and the pupils friendly and natural relations always arose, without which it is not possible for a teacher to know his pupils fully.... With reference to the methods of instruction, the results were that no method was adopted or rejected because it pleased or did not please the teacher, but only because the pupil, without compulsion, accepted or did not accept it. But besides the good results which unfailingly followed the adoption of my method both by myself and by all--more than twenty--other teachers (I say 'unfailingly' because we never had a single pupil who did not master the rudiments)--besides these results, the adoption of the principles of which I have spoken produced this effect, that during fifteen years all the different modifications to which my method has been subjected, have not only not removed it from the demands of the people, but have brought it closer and closer to them.... In my school... every teacher, while bringing his pupils forward, himself feels the need of learning; and this was constantly the case with all the teachers I had. Moreover, the very methods of instruction themselves--since they are not fixed once for all but aim at finding the easiest and simplest paths--change and improve according to what the teacher learns from the pupils' relation to his teaching. The children had not to pay anything for attending the school, and the relations between them and Tolstoy are illustrated by the account a visitor has given of seeing Tolstoy rush through a gate followed by a crowd of merry youngsters who were snow-balling him. Tolstoy was intent on making his escape, but on seeing the visitor he changed his mind, acknowledged his defeat, and surrendered to his triumphant pursuers. Tolstoy does not stand before the world to-day primarily as a school-master, and even were I competent to deal with the subject, it would exceed the limits of this biography to attempt a detailed criticism of his precepts and practice; but he evidently possessed, as he claims in one of his articles, 'a certain pedagogic tact'; and he is clearly right in his belief that the rigid discipline of schools, the lack of freedom and initiative, the continual demand for silence and obedience, and the refusal to allow pupils to criticise the lessons they receive, have a constantly stupefying effect.