Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1904
Source: "Fables for Children," by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the original Russian and edited by leo Wiener, assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University, published by Dana Estese Company, Boston, Edition De Luxe, limited to one thousand copies of which this is no. 411, copyright 1904, electrotyped and printed by C. H. Simonds and Co., Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
One day we were cleaning an overgrown path on a hillock near the pond. We cut down a lot of brier bushes, willows, and poplars,—then came the turn of a bird-cherry. It was growing on the path, and it was so old and stout that it could not be less than ten years old. And yet I knew that five years ago the garden had been cleaned. I could not understand how such an old bird-cherry could have grown out there. We cut it down and went farther. Farther away, in another thicket, there grew a similar bird-cherry, even stouter than the first. I looked at its root, and saw that it grew under an old linden. The linden with its branches choked it, and it had stretched out about twelve feet in a straight line, and only then came out to the light, raised its head, and began to blossom.
I cut it down at the root, and was surprised to find it so fresh, while the root was rotten. After we had cut it down, the peasants and I tried to pull it off; but no matter how much we jerked at it, we were unable to drag it away: it seemed to have stuck fast. I said:
"Look whether it has not caught somewhere."
A workman crawled under it, and called out:
"It has another root; it is out on the path!"
I walked over to him, and saw that it was so.
Not to be choked by the linden, the bird-cherry had gone away from underneath the linden out on the path, about eight feet from its former root. The root which I had cut down was rotten and dry, but the new one was fresh. The bird-cherry had evidently felt that it could not exist under the linden, so it had stretched out, dropped a branch to the ground, made a root of that branch, and left the other root. Only then did I understand how the first bird-cherry had grown out on the road. It had evidently done the same,—only it had had time to give up the old root, and so I had not found it.