“My dear children, there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.

Perhaps we may even grow wicked later on, may be unable to refrain from a bad action, may laugh at men’s tears and may even jeer spitefully at such people. But however bad we may become, yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, the cruelest and most mocking of us won’t dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! And, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ I say this in case we become bad, but there’s no reason why we should become bad. Let us be, first and above all, kind; then, honest; and then, let us never forget each other!”