SCHOOL DAYS IN RUSSIA 5 



death. He was so thin, that I, his younger sister, car- 

 ried him in my arms. I remember though that shortly 

 after his illness he suddenly began to grow and soon 

 shot up into a tall, lank youth." 



It proves how high he stood in the opinion of his 

 teachers that although he had been sick during examina- 

 tion time, he was promoted to the fifth class of the 

 Gymnasium without the test and with high honors. 



In his eighth year of school a number of pupils at 

 the Odessa Gymnasium were expelled for being mixed 

 up in some Workingmen's Circles and liberal propa- 

 ganda work, and had to forfeit their diplomas. They 

 applied to the Berdiansk Gymnasium and were ad- 

 mitted. When they came to Berdiansk two of them 

 became boarders at the house of Grisha's mother. 

 Those two boys became widely known in later years, 

 Kostia Puritz as a physician, and Lyova Albert as a 

 great social worker. All three became very close 

 friends. The boys from the big city exercised a great 

 influence on the country boy and quickened his interest 

 in matters of public welfare. They had lived in the 

 midst of the great movements of the time. They were 

 full of big ideas and took a great interest in the newly- 

 started, revolutionary, underground paper, "Land and 

 Freedom," which advocated the taking of the land by 

 those who till it, and freedom of thought for all. 



Berdiansk was a small country place, in no way to be 

 compared with Odessa, but the three boys were not cast 

 down. They set about organizing several "self-edu- 



