Taras Bulba |
|
Author:
| Gogol, Nikolai |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-06005-9 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
|
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $19.99 |
Book Description:
|
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II ALL three horsemen rode on in silence. Old Taras was thinking of the distant past; before him passed his youth, his years ? his vanished years, over which the kazak always weeps, wishing that his life might be all youth. He wondered whom of his former comrades he should meet in the Syech. He reckoned up...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II ALL three horsemen rode on in silence. Old Taras was thinking of the distant past; before him passed his youth, his years ? his vanished years, over which the kazak always weeps, wishing that his life might be all youth. He wondered whom of his former comrades he should meet in the Syech. He reckoned up how many were already dead, how many were still alive. Tears formed slowly in his eyes, and his grey head drooped dejectedly. His sons were occupied with other thoughts. But we must speak more at length of his sons. They had been sent at the age of twelve years to the academy at Kiev, because all honourable officials of that epoch considered it indispensable to give their children an education, even if it were utterly forgotten afterwards. Like all who entered the free academy, they were then wild, having been reared in unrestricted freedom; and there, for the first time, they were generally smoothed down a bit, and acquired a certain something common to them all, which caused themto bear a sort of universal resemblance to one another. The elder, Ostap, began his career by running away in the course of the first year. He was brought back, terribly flogged, and set down again to his books. Four times did he bury his primer in the earth; and four times, after bestowing upon him an inhuman thrashing, did they buy him a new one. But he would have repeated his performance for the fifth time, doubtless, had not his father given him a solemn assurance that he would keep him at service in the monastery for twenty years, and had he not sworn to start with, that he should never behold Zaporozhe so long as he lived, unless he learned all the sciences in the academy. The odd point about it was, that he who said this was that same Taras Bulba who condemned all learning, and counsell...