PREFACE
This volume is divided into seven parts.
First we have Tales for Children, published about the year 1872, and reminding us of the time when Tolstoy was absorbed in efforts to educate the peasant children. This section of the book contains the two stories which of all that he has written Tolstoy likes best. In What is Art? he claims no place among examples of good art for any of his own productions 'except for the story God sees the Truth, but Waits, which seeks a place in the first class (religious art), and A Prisoner in the Caucasus, which belongs to the second (universal art).' In the first of these the subject (a favourite one with Tolstoy) is the forgiveness of injuries. The second deals with the simplest feelings common to all men: fear and courage, pity, endurance, &c., expressed with that individuality, clearness, and sincerity, which Tolstoy says are the signs of true art.
Part II contains a series of stories written for the people; and among them What Men Live By, probably the most widely circulated of all Tolstoy's tales. It is founded on the oft-repeated legend of an angel sent by God to live for a while among men.
Part III consists of a Fairy Tale, Iván the Fool, which contains in popular form Tolstoy's indictment of militarism and commercialism.
Part IV contains three short stories written to help the sale of cheap reproductions of some good drawings; Tolstoy having for many years been anxious by all means in his power to further the circulation, at a cheap price, of good works of pictorial as well as literary art.
In Part V we have a series of Russian Folk-Tales. The gems of this collection are the temperance story, The Imp and the Crust, the anti-war story, The Empty
