As I am sometimes asked where satisfactory versions of these stories can be found, I may say that I think the best version of _Childhood_, _Boyhood_ and _Youth_[49] is Miss Isabel Hapgood's, and I make no apology for quoting a letter Tolstoy wrote me on 23rd December 1901, concerning the volume, _Sevastopol_,[50] translated by my wife and myself, and containing the six stories marked * in the above list. I do this with less hesitation, because his letter illustrates the cordial way in which he encourages those who do any work he can approve of, in connection with his own activity: [49] Published by Walter Scott, Ltd., London, and by T. Y. Crowell and Co., New York. [50] Published by Messrs. A. Constable and Co., London, and Funk and Wagnalls Co., New York. I think I already wrote you how unusually the volume pleases me. All in it is excellent: the edition and the footnotes, and chiefly the translation, and yet more the conscientiousness with which all this has been done. I happened to open it at _Two Hussars_ and read on to the end just as if it were something new that had been written in English. One day in October Tolstoy went out for a ride on his favourite horse, an English thoroughbred named Máshka. His borzoi dogs Lúbka and Krylát accompanied him. After he had ridden some way, a hare suddenly started up and the dogs rushed after it. Tolstoy had not come out with the idea of hunting, but on seeing the dogs chasing the hare he could not restrain himself, and galloped after them, uttering the hunting cry, 'Atoú!' The weather was bad, the ground slippery, and the horse stumbled at a narrow ravine and fell, dislocating and breaking its rider's arm. The horse ran away, and Tolstoy, who was quite alone and several miles from home, fainted. When he came to, he managed to drag himself a distance of more than half a mile to the highroad, where he lay in great pain. Some peasant carts passed by, but at first he could not attract any one's attention. When at last he was noticed, in order not to alarm his wife, he asked to be taken to the hut of an old wife, Akoulína, famed as a bone-setter. In spite of all that she and her son Iván could do--soaping, pulling, twisting and bandaging the arm--they could not set it, and Tolstoy continued to suffer the greatest pain.