Contrary to my expectation, I found that, after the first two couplets executed in the initial heat of enthusiasm, even my most strenuous efforts refused to produce another one.  I began to read different poems in our books, but neither Dimitrieff nor Derzhavin could help me.  On the contrary, they only confirmed my sense of incompetence.  Knowing, however, that Karl Ivanitch was fond of writing verses, I stole softly upstairs to burrow among his papers, and found, among a number of German verses, some in the Russian language which seemed to have come from his own pen.

     To L

     Remember near
     Remember far,
     Remember me. 
     To-day be faithful, and for ever—­
     Aye, still beyond the grave—­remember
     That I have well loved thee.

     “Karl Mayer.”

These verses (which were written in a fine, round hand on thin letter-paper) pleased me with the touching sentiment with which they seemed to be inspired.  I learnt them by heart, and decided to take them as a model.  The thing was much easier now.  By the time the name-day had arrived I had completed a twelve-couplet congratulatory ode, and sat down to the table in our school-room to copy them out on vellum.

Two sheets were soon spoiled—­not because I found it necessary to alter anything (the verses seemed to me perfect), but because, after the third line, the tail-end of each successive one would go curving upward and making it plain to all the world that the whole thing had been written with a want of adherence to the horizontal—­a thing which I could not bear to see.

The third sheet also came out crooked, but I determined to make it do.  In my verses I congratulated Grandmamma, wished her many happy returns, and concluded thus: 

     “Endeavouring you to please and cheer,
      We love you like our Mother dear.”

This seemed to me not bad, yet it offended my ear somehow.

“Lo-ve you li-ike our Mo-ther dear,” I repeated to myself.  “What other rhyme could I use instead of ‘dear’?  Fear?  Steer?  Well, it must go at that.  At least the verses are better than Karl Ivanitch’s.”

Accordingly I added the last verse to the rest.  Then I went into our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and gesticulation.  The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I did not stop to consider that.  Yet the last one displeased me more than ever.  As I sat on my bed I thought: 

“Why on earth did I write ‘like our Mother dear’?  She is not here, and therefore she need never have been mentioned.  True, I love and respect Grandmamma, but she is not quite the same as—­Why did I write that?  What did I go and tell a lie for?  They may be verses only, yet I needn’t quite have done that.”

At that moment the tailor arrived with some new clothes for us.

“Well, so be it!” I said in much vexation as I crammed the verses hastily under my pillow and ran down to adorn myself in the new Moscow garments.