Book Black Chicken, or Underground Inhabitants. read online

A wonderful fairy tale about a black hen was written by Antony Pogorelsky for his ten-year-old nephew Alyosha Tolstoy. This boy later became a famous writer and poet.

Very briefly

The main character of the fairy tale is also ten years old and his name is also Alyosha. He lives at a boarding house in St. Petersburg, far from his parents. Alyosha is a diligent student, a good friend and just a kind boy. One day he saves a chicken that was assigned to the kitchen, and from that moment his life changes completely. He gains an amazing ability, but instead of using it to benefit himself and others, he imagines that he is now better than his comrades, becoming proud, arrogant and lazy. Alyosha commits an act, which he later deeply repents of, and this becomes the beginning of his return to his former life as a diligent student.

The wonderful fairy tale of Anthony Pogorelsky has been teaching boys and girls for almost 200 years to take responsibility for their words and actions, value friendship and not look for workarounds where diligence is needed. And for adults, this work is an opportunity to remember their childhood, plunging into the atmosphere of one of the favorite fairy tales of their childhood.

Read the summary of the story The Black Chicken or the Underground Inhabitants of Pogorelsky

So, our Alyosha is a lonely, quiet boy who lives very far from his home and his family. He was brought to St. Petersburg to receive a good education. Alyosha constantly lives in a boarding house and does not even have the opportunity to go home during the holidays. He misses his loved ones very much, he invents stories for himself about a kind sorceress who will someday come to the fence of the boarding house and give him a gift from his parents.

The days of study are filled with a variety of activities, and time passes quickly for Alyosha, on holidays, weekends and vacations, his fellow students go to their families, and he is left completely alone. The boy has very little entertainment during such periods; he reads chivalric novels, fortunately the teacher allows him to borrow books from his library, walks in the yard and makes friends with the chickens, plays with them, and feeds them bread crumbs. Of all, the boy singles out one, the most beautiful, in his opinion. He calls her Chernushka for the color of her feathers, and considers her his friend.

One day, while walking in the yard, Alyosha sees the cook trying to catch his beloved Chernushka. The further fate of the chicken is clear to the boy, and he, rushing to the cook, begs her to let the black chicken go, giving in exchange for her life, his only, carefully kept, jewel - a gold coin. From this moment, real magic begins in Alyosha’s life.

That same night Chernushka comes to his bedroom and invites him with him to a part of the house where the boy has never been before. On the way, the black chicken asks him to be quiet. But the surrounding situation surprises Alyosha so much that he cannot restrain himself and it is his fault that noise occurs. The knights guarding the magical passage wake up, and Chernushka enters into battle with them. From the unreality of what is happening and strong emotions, Alyosha loses consciousness and... wakes up in the morning in his bed. He is annoyed with himself for his incontinence and waits for the night in the hope that the chicken will come to him again. That's what happens.

This time Alyosha tries her best to be quiet, and they still end up in the magic kingdom. Suddenly it turns out that Chernushka is not a chicken at all, but a prime minister who is valued by all the inhabitants of the underground kingdom. The king himself comes out to Alyosha to thank him and promises to fulfill any wish. Alyosha, not ready for such a turn, asks for the first thing that came to mind - the ability to always know a given lesson without making an effort. He is given a magic seed that has such power as long as it is in the pocket of his clothes. Then the underground inhabitants show Alyosha the wonders of their kingdom, invite him to hunt and treat him to a delicious meal. Chernushka tells the history of the kingdom and asks the boy never to tell anyone about their existence, because otherwise they will have to go far, far away from here.

School begins. On the very first day, Alyosha, having studied nothing, answers all the lessons brilliantly. At first, he is embarrassed by the praise; he understands that he is not responsible for the excellent results. But as time goes by, he gets used to his gift and begins to look down on his comrades, for whom studying is not so easy. From a modest, diligent and kind boy, he turns into an arrogant, proud, arrogant one. He becomes a notorious naughty boy and the more he plays pranks, the more lessons he is given in the form of punishment. And then one day he failed to answer the teacher for the given lesson.

Putting his hand in his pocket, he discovered that the wonderful seed had disappeared. He spent the whole day upset, and at night Chernushka brought him the loss. The Minister of the Underworld was very upset by the change that had occurred in his friend. Alyosha decides to improve. The next day he answers the lesson to the teacher, lying that he learned everything in the morning, but his comrades catch him in a lie, and out of fear of punishment, Alyosha tells the whole truth about his gift and Chernushka, and the underground inhabitants. Of course, they don’t believe him, the boy is punished. At night, it turns out that all the underground inhabitants are leaving their habitable place, and Chernushka is now forced to wear chains on his hands as a sign of punishment. Alyosha becomes seriously ill from his worries the next morning. While recovering, he realizes that the changes that have happened to him have ruined his character. Alyosha greatly repents of his attitude towards his comrades and most of all of the fact that he told about the underground kingdom, forcing its inhabitants to go to new places. The boy improves, once again becoming kind, diligent, hardworking and modest.

Picture or drawing Black chicken or underground inhabitants

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Pogorelsky in his book “The Black Hen or the Underground Inhabitants” talks about a men’s boarding school, where the boy Alyosha studies among the children. School days were pleasant for him, but as the weekend approached, he remained alone in the boarding school, because his parents lived very far from the city and could not come for him.
On days like these, Alyosha felt lonely. All he had to do was feed the chickens running around in the yard. He named the most affectionate black one Chernushka.

When the boarding house cook tried to catch his favorite for a holiday, the boy saved her by giving her a gold imperial, which he had received as a gift from his grandmother.

One day, through a dream, Alyoshenka heard someone’s voice. It was Chernushka who called him, promising to show him something good. She led the boy to a locked door, which she opened with a flapping of her wings. The chicken asked the boy not to touch anything. When they entered the hall, they were attacked by knights who jumped from the walls of the room. Having become huge, Chernushka bravely fought with the knights, Alyosha fainted from fear.

Further in the book “The Black Hen or the Underground Inhabitants” Chernushka introduces Alyosha to the king of the little people, who, for saving his minister, rewarded him with the gift of knowledge of lessons using a seed, asking him not to tell anyone about them.

From that time on, Alyosha easily taught all his lessons, but his behavior worsened. But one day, not finding the seeds, Alyosha was unable to learn his lesson, for which he was punished. Chernushka saved him by returning the grain.

One day Alyosha was forced to tell the teacher how he knew his lessons. They didn't believe him, but he lost a friend. Chernushka, saying goodbye, asked the boy to correct his behavior.

The fairy tale “The Black Hen or the Underground Inhabitants” ends with the fact that Alyosha has changed for the better, but has lost the gift of knowing lessons without cramming.

From us you can download the book “The Black Hen or the Underground Inhabitants” for free and without registration in fb2, ePub, mobi, PDF, txt format

The book includes two famous stories, “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants” and “Lafert’s Poppy Plant.” For middle school age.

A series: School library (Children's literature)

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by liters company.

BLACK CHICKEN, or UNDERGROUND RESIDENTS

About forty years ago*, in St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island, in the First Line*, there lived the owner of a men's boarding house*, which to this day, probably, remains in the fresh memory of many, although the house where the boarding house was located , has long given way to another, not at all similar to the previous one. At that time, our St. Petersburg was already famous throughout Europe for its beauty, although it was still far from what it is now.

Then there were no cheerful shady alleys on the avenues of Vasilievsky Island: wooden stages, often knocked together from rotten boards, took the place of today’s beautiful sidewalks. Isaac's Bridge*, narrow and uneven at that time, had a completely different appearance than it does now; and St. Isaac's Square itself was not like that at all. Then the monument to Peter the Great was separated from St. Isaac's Square* by a ditch; The Admiralty* was not lined with trees, the Horse Guards Manege* did not decorate the square with the beautiful façade it now has - in a word, the Petersburg of that time was not the same as it is now. Cities have, by the way, the advantage over people that they sometimes become more beautiful with age... However, that’s not what we’re talking about now. Another time and on another occasion, perhaps I will talk with you at greater length about the changes that have taken place in St. Petersburg during my century, but now let’s turn again to the boarding house, which about forty years ago was located on Vasilyevsky Island, in the First Line.

The house, which you now - as I already told you - will not find, was about two floors, covered with Dutch tiles. The porch along which one entered it was wooden and overlooked the street. From the vestibule a rather steep staircase led to the upper housing, which consisted of eight or nine rooms, in which the keeper of the boarding house lived on one side, and classrooms on the other. The dormitories, or children's bedrooms, were located on the lower floor, on the right side of the entryway, and on the left lived two old Dutch women, each of whom was more than a hundred years old and who saw Peter the Great with their own eyes and even spoke to him. Nowadays, it is unlikely that in all of Russia you will meet a person who has seen Peter the Great; the time will come when our traces will be erased from the face of the earth! Everything passes, everything disappears in our mortal world... but that’s not what we’re talking about now.

Among the thirty or forty children studying at that boarding school, there was one boy named Alyosha, who was then no more than 9 or 10 years old. His parents, who lived far, far from St. Petersburg, had brought him to the capital two years earlier, sent him to a boarding school and returned home, paying the teacher the agreed upon fee several years in advance. Alyosha was a smart, cute boy, he studied well, and everyone loved and caressed him. However, despite this, he was often bored at the boarding house, and sometimes even sad. Especially* at first he could not get used to the idea that he was separated from his family. But then, little by little, he began to get used to his situation, and there were even moments when, playing with his friends, he thought that it was much more fun in the boarding house than in his parents' house. In general, the days of study passed quickly and pleasantly for him, but when Saturday came and all his comrades hurried home to their relatives, then Alyosha bitterly felt his loneliness. On Sundays and holidays he was left alone all day, and then his only consolation was reading books that the teacher allowed him to take from his small library. The teacher was a German by birth; at that time, the fashion for chivalric novels and fairy tales dominated in German literature, and this library mostly consisted of books of this kind.

So, Alyosha, while still ten years old, already knew by heart the deeds of the most glorious knights, at least as they were described in the novels. His favorite pastime on long winter evenings, on Sundays and other holidays was to mentally transport himself to ancient, long-past centuries... Especially during vacant times*, such as, for example, about Christmas or Easter Sunday, when he was separated for a long time from his family. comrades, when he often sat for whole days in solitude - his young imagination wandered through knightly castles, through terrible ruins or through dark, dense forests.

I forgot to tell you that this house had a fairly spacious courtyard, separated from the alley by a wooden fence made of baroque planks*. The gate and gate that led to the alley were always locked, and therefore Alyosha never had the opportunity to visit this alley, which greatly aroused his curiosity. Whenever they allowed him to play in the yard during rest hours, his first movement was to run up to the fence. Here he stood on tiptoe and looked intently into the round holes with which the fence was dotted. Alyosha did not know that these holes came from the wooden nails with which the barges had previously been nailed together, and it seemed to him that some kind sorceress had drilled these holes on purpose for him. He kept expecting that someday this sorceress would appear in the alley and through a hole would give him a toy, or a talisman*, or a letter from daddy or mummy, from whom he had not received any news for a long time. But, to his extreme regret, no one even resembling the sorceress appeared.

Alyosha’s other occupation was to feed the chickens, who lived near the fence in a house specially built for them and played and ran around in the yard all day long. Alyosha got to know them very briefly, knew everyone by name, broke up their fights, and the bully punished them by sometimes not giving them anything from the crumbs for several days in a row, which he always collected from the tablecloth after lunch and dinner. Among the hens, he especially loved the black crested one, called Chernushka. Chernushka was more affectionate to him than others; she even sometimes allowed herself to be stroked, and therefore Alyosha brought her the best pieces. She was of a quiet disposition; she rarely walked with others and seemed to love Alyosha more than her friends.

One day (it was during the holidays, between New Year and Epiphany - the day was beautiful and unusually warm, no more than three or four degrees below zero) Alyosha was allowed to play in the yard. That day the teacher and his wife were in great trouble. They gave lunch to the director of the schools, and the day before, from morning until late evening, they washed the floors everywhere in the house, wiped the dust and waxed the mahogany tables and chests of drawers. The teacher himself went to buy provisions for the table: white Arkhangelsk veal, a huge ham and Kiev jam from the Milyutin shops*. Alyosha also contributed to the preparations to the best of his ability: he was forced to cut out a beautiful mesh for a ham from white paper and decorate six wax candles that had been specially purchased with paper carvings. On the appointed day, the hairdresser appeared in the morning and showed his art on the teacher’s curls, toupee* and long braid. Then he set to work on his wife, pomaded and powdered her curls and chignon, and piled a whole greenhouse of different flowers* on her head, between which sparkled skillfully placed two diamond rings, once given to her husband by her students’ parents. After finishing her headdress, she threw on an old, worn-out cloak* and went to work on the housework, watching strictly so that her hair would not somehow get damaged; and for this reason she herself did not enter the kitchen, but gave orders to her cook standing in the doorway. When necessary, she sent her husband there, whose hair was not so high.

During all these worries, our Alyosha was completely forgotten, and he took advantage of this to play in the open space in the yard. As was his custom, he first approached the plank fence and looked through the hole for a long time; but even on this day almost no one passed along the alley, and with a sigh he turned to his kind chickens. Before he had time to sit down on the log and had just begun to beckon them to him, he suddenly saw a cook next to him with a large knife. Alyosha never liked this cook - an angry and scolding little girl*. But since he noticed that she was the reason that the number of his chickens was decreasing from time to time, he began to love her even less. When one day he accidentally saw in the kitchen a pretty, very beloved cockerel, hanging by the legs with its throat cut, he felt horror and disgust for her. Seeing her now with a knife, he immediately guessed what it meant, and, feeling with sorrow that he was unable to help his friends, he jumped up and ran far away.

- Alyosha, Alyosha! Help me catch the chicken! - the cook shouted, but Alyosha began to run even faster, hid by the fence behind the chicken coop and did not notice how tears rolled out of his eyes one after another and fell to the ground.

He stood by the chicken coop for quite a long time, and his heart was beating strongly, while the cook ran around the yard, beckoning to the chickens: “Chick, chick, chick!” - she scolded them in Chukhon.

Suddenly Alyosha’s heart began to beat even faster: he heard the voice of his beloved Chernushka! She cackled in the most desperate way, and it seemed to him that she was shouting:

Where, where, where, where!

Alyosha, save Chernukha!

Kuduhu, kuduhu,

Chernukha, Chernukha!

Alyosha could not remain in his place any longer. Sobbing loudly, he ran to the cook and threw himself on her neck at the very moment she caught Chernushka by the wing.

- Dear, dear Trinushka! – he cried, shedding tears. – Please don’t touch my Chernukha!

Alyosha threw himself so suddenly on the cook’s neck that she lost Chernushka from her hands, who, taking advantage of this, flew out of fear onto the roof of the barn and continued cackling there. But Alyosha now heard as if she were teasing the cook and shouting:

Where, where, where, where!

You didn't catch Chernukha!

Kuduhu, kuduhu!

Chernukha, Chernukha!

Meanwhile, the cook was beside herself with frustration.

“Rummal sing!” she shouted. “That’s it, I’ll fall to the cassai and plow.” Shorna kuris nada cut... He's lazy... He doesn't do anything, he doesn't sit down.

Then she wanted to run to the teacher, but Alyosha did not let her in. He clung to the hem of her dress and began to beg so touchingly that she stopped.

- Darling, Trinushka! - he said. - You are so pretty, clean, kind... Please leave my Chernushka! Look what I'll give you if you're kind!

Alyosha took out of his pocket an imperial*, which made up his entire estate*, which he treasured more than his own eyes, because it was a gift from his kind grandmother. The cook looked at the gold coin, glanced around the windows of the house to make sure that no one saw them, and extended her hand for the imperial. Alyosha was very, very sorry for the imperial, but he remembered Chernushka - and firmly gave the precious gift.

Thus Chernushka was saved from cruel and inevitable death.

As soon as the cook retired into the house, Chernushka flew off the roof and ran up to Alyosha. She seemed to know that he was her savior - she circled around him, flapping her wings and clucking in a cheerful voice. All morning she followed him around the yard like a dog, and it seemed as if she wanted to tell him something, but couldn’t. At least he couldn't make out her cackling sounds.

About two hours before dinner, guests began to gather. Alyosha was called upstairs, they put on a shirt with a round collar and cambric cuffs with small folds, white trousers and a wide blue silk sash. His long brown hair, which hung almost to his waist, was thoroughly combed, divided into two even parts and placed in front - on both sides of his chest. This is how children were dressed up back then. Then they taught him how he should shuffle his foot when the director enters the room, and what he should answer if any questions are asked of him. At another time, Alyosha would have been very happy about the arrival of the director, whom he had long wanted to see, because, judging by the respect with which the teacher and teacher spoke of him, he imagined that this must be some famous knight in shiny armor and helmet with large feathers. But this time this curiosity gave way to the thought that exclusively occupied him then - about the black chicken. He kept imagining how the cook was running after her with a knife and how Chernushka was cackling in different voices. Moreover, he was very annoyed that he could not make out what she wanted to tell him, and he was drawn to the chicken coop... But there was nothing to do: he had to wait until lunch was over!

Finally the director arrived. His arrival was announced by the teacher, who had been sitting by the window for a long time, looking intently in the direction from which they were waiting for him. Everything was in motion: the teacher rushed headlong out of the door to meet him below, at the porch; the guests rose from their places. And even Alyosha forgot about his chicken for a minute and went to the window to watch the knight get off his zealous horse. But he was unable to see him: the director had already entered the house. At the porch, instead of a zealous horse, there stood an ordinary carriage sleigh. Alyosha was very surprised by this. “If I were a knight,” he thought, “then I would never drive a cab, but always on horseback!”

Meanwhile, all the doors were opened wide; and the teacher began to curtsy* in anticipation of such an honorable guest, who soon appeared. At first it was impossible to see him behind the fat teacher who stood right in the doorway; but when she, having finished her long greeting, sat down lower than usual, Alyosha, to extreme surprise, saw from behind her... not a feathered helmet, but just a small bald head, whitely powdered, the only decoration of which, as Alyosha later noticed, was a small bun ! When he entered the living room, Alyosha was even more surprised to see that, despite the simple gray tailcoat* that the director wore instead of shiny armor, everyone treated him with unusual respect.

No matter how strange all this seemed to Alyosha, no matter how much at another time he would have been delighted by the unusual decoration of the table, on that day he did not pay much attention to it. The morning incident with Chernushka kept wandering through his head. Dessert was served: various kinds of preserves, apples, bergamots*, dates, wine berries* and walnuts; but even here he never stopped thinking about his chicken for a single moment. And they had just gotten up from the table when, with his heart trembling with fear and hope, he approached the teacher and asked if he could go play in the yard.

“Come,” answered the teacher, “just don’t stay there for long: it will soon become dark.”

Alyosha hastily put on his red cap with squirrel fur* and a green velvet cap with a sable band and ran to the fence. When he arrived there, the chickens had already begun to gather for the night and, sleepy, were not very happy about the crumbs he had brought. Only Chernushka seemed to have no desire to sleep: she ran up to him cheerfully, flapped her wings and began to cackle again. Alyosha played with her for a long time; Finally, when it became dark and it was time to go home, he himself closed the chicken coop, making sure in advance that his dear chicken sat on the pole. When he left the chicken coop, it seemed to him that Chernushka’s eyes glowed in the dark like stars, and that she quietly said to him:

- Alyosha, Alyosha! Stay with me!

Alyosha returned to the house and sat alone in the classrooms all evening, while at the other half of the hour until eleven the guests stayed and played whist on several tables. Before they parted, Alyosha went to the lower floor, to the bedroom, undressed, went to bed and put out the fire. For a long time he could not fall asleep. Finally, sleep overcame him, and he had just managed to talk with Chernushka in his sleep when, unfortunately, he was awakened by the noise of the guests leaving. A little later, the teacher, who was seeing off the director with a candle, entered his room, looked to see if everything was in order, and went out, locking the door with the key.

End of introductory fragment.

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The given introductory fragment of the book Black chicken, or Underground inhabitants (collection) (Antony Pogorelsky, 1825,1829) provided by our book partner -

Once upon a time there lived the owner of a men's boarding house, which to this day, probably, remains in the fresh memory of many, although the house where the boarding house was located has long since given way to another, not at all similar to the previous one. At that time, our St. Petersburg was already famous throughout Europe for its beauty, although it was still far from what it is now. At that time, there were no cheerful shady alleys on the avenues of Vasilyevsky Island: wooden stages, often knocked together from rotten boards, took the place of today’s beautiful sidewalks. Isaac's Bridge, narrow and uneven at that time, presented a completely different appearance than it does now; and St. Isaac's Square itself was not like that at all. Then the monument to Peter the Great was separated from St. Isaac's Square by a ditch; The Admiralty was not surrounded by trees, the Horse Guards Manege did not decorate the square with the beautiful façade it now has - in a word, the Petersburg of that time was not the same as it is now. Cities have, by the way, the advantage over people that they sometimes become more beautiful with age... However, that’s not what we’re talking about now. Another time and on another occasion, perhaps I will talk with you at greater length about the changes that have taken place in St. Petersburg during my century, but now let’s turn again to the boarding house, which about forty years ago was located on Vasilyevsky Island, in the First Line.

The house, which you now - as I already told you - will not find, was about two floors, covered with Dutch tiles. The porch along which one entered it was wooden and overlooked the street. From the vestibule, a rather steep staircase led to the upper housing, which consisted of eight or nine rooms, in which the keeper of the boarding house lived on one side, and classrooms on the other. The dormitories, or children's bedrooms, were located on the lower floor, on the right side of the entryway, and on the left lived two old Dutch women, each of whom was more than a hundred years old and who saw Peter the Great with their own eyes and even spoke to him. Nowadays, it is unlikely that in all of Russia you will meet a person who has seen Peter the Great; the time will come when our traces will be erased from the face of the earth! Everything passes, everything disappears in our mortal world... but that’s not what we’re talking about now.

Among the thirty or forty children studying at that boarding school, there was one boy named Alyosha, who was then no more than 9 or 10 years old. His parents, who lived far, far from St. Petersburg, had brought him to the capital two years before, sent him to a boarding school and returned home, paying the teacher the agreed fee for several years in advance. Alyosha was a smart, cute boy, he studied well, and everyone loved and caressed him. However, despite this, he was often bored at the boarding house, and sometimes even sad. Especially at first, he could not get used to the idea that he was separated from his family. But then, little by little, he began to get used to his situation, and there were even moments when, playing with his friends, he thought that it was much more fun in the boarding house than in his parents' house. In general, the days of study passed quickly and pleasantly for him, but when Saturday came and all his comrades hurried home to their relatives, then Alyosha bitterly felt his loneliness. On Sundays and holidays he was left alone all day, and then his only consolation was reading books that the teacher allowed him to take from his small library. The teacher was a German by birth; at that time, the fashion for chivalric novels and fairy tales dominated in German literature, and this library mostly consisted of books of this kind.

So, Alyosha, while still ten years old, already knew by heart the deeds of the most glorious knights, at least as they were described in the novels. His favorite pastime on long winter evenings, on Sundays and other holidays was to mentally transport himself to ancient, long-past centuries... Especially during vacant times, such as Christmas or Easter Sunday, when he was separated for a long time from his comrades , when he often sat for whole days in solitude, his young imagination wandered through knightly castles, through terrible ruins or through dark, dense forests.

I forgot to tell you that this house had a fairly spacious courtyard, separated from the alley by a wooden fence made of baroque planks. The gate and gate that led to the alley were always locked, and therefore Alyosha never had the opportunity to visit this alley, which greatly aroused his curiosity. Whenever they allowed him to play in the yard during rest hours, his first movement was to run up to the fence. Here he stood on tiptoe and looked intently into the round holes with which the fence was dotted. Alyosha did not know that these holes came from the wooden nails with which the barges had previously been knocked together, and it seemed to him that some kind sorceress had drilled these holes on purpose for him. He kept expecting that someday this sorceress would appear in the alley and through the hole would give him a toy, or a talisman, or a letter from daddy or mummy, from whom he had not received any news for a long time. But, to his extreme regret, no one even resembling the sorceress appeared.

Alyosha’s other occupation was to feed the chickens, who lived near the fence in a house specially built for them and played and ran around in the yard all day long. Alyosha got to know them very briefly, knew everyone by name, broke up their fights, and the bully punished them by sometimes not giving them anything from the crumbs for several days in a row, which he always collected from the tablecloth after lunch and dinner. Among the chickens, he especially loved the black crested one, called Chernushka. Chernushka was more affectionate to him than others; she even sometimes allowed herself to be stroked, and therefore Alyosha brought her the best pieces. She was of a quiet disposition; she rarely walked with others and seemed to love Alyosha more than her friends.

One day (it was during the holidays, between New Year and Epiphany - the day was beautiful and unusually warm, no more than three or four degrees below zero) Alyosha was allowed to play in the yard. That day the teacher and his wife were in great trouble. They gave lunch to the director of the schools, and even the day before, from morning until late evening, they washed the floors everywhere in the house, wiped the dust and waxed the mahogany tables and chests of drawers. The teacher himself went to buy provisions for the table: white Arkhangelsk veal, a huge ham and Kiev jam from the Milyutin shops. Alyosha also contributed to the preparations to the best of his ability: he was forced to cut out a beautiful mesh for a ham from white paper and decorate six wax candles that had been specially purchased with paper carvings. On the appointed day, the hairdresser appeared in the morning and showed his art on the teacher’s curls, toupee and long braid. Then he set to work on his wife, pomaded and powdered her curls and chignon, and piled a whole greenhouse of different flowers on her head, between which sparkled skillfully placed two diamond rings, once given to her husband by her students’ parents. After finishing the headdress, she threw on an old, worn-out robe and went to work on the housework, watching strictly so that her hair would not get damaged in any way; and for this reason she herself did not enter the kitchen, but gave orders to her cook, standing in the doorway. In necessary cases, she sent her husband there, whose hair was not so high.

Title: Black chicken, or Underground inhabitants

About the book “The Black Hen, or Underground Inhabitants” by Antony Pogorelsky

Alexey Perovsky (1787-1836) is a Russian writer, an honorary member of the Russian Academy, who took the name Antony Pogorelsky as a pseudonym. For the first time I tried myself as an author when publishing three lectures on botany, which were published in a separate brochure. After that, he organized a union of lovers of Russian literature, and often personally took part in organizing literary evenings.

During the war of 1914-1918. Perovsky went to the front and showed extraordinary courage in battle. And at the end of hostilities, he left the service and settled in the village of Pogoreltsy, which he inherited after the death of his father. It was the name of the village that served as the idea for the writer’s pseudonym - Antony Pogorelsky.

The author wrote the fairy tale “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants” for his beloved nephew Alyosha Tolstoy, who later also became a writer. Antony Pogorelsky felt extraordinary affection for the boy and devoted a lot of time to his upbringing.

The work “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants” traces autobiographical moments in the life of the writer himself, and the name of the main character coincides with his name.
Pogorelsky's fairy tale became the first author's children's work in Russian. “The Black Hen, or Underground Inhabitants”, unlike folk stories, contains specifics - the author reflects in detail the realities of that time.

The main character of the fairy tale is a kind and obedient boy Alyosha. He lives in one of the children's boarding houses in St. Petersburg, studies well and reads a lot. Parents rarely visit Alyosha and don’t even take him away for the holidays, so the boy escapes boredom by reading science fiction stories. But soon miracles begin to happen in the boy’s real life.

One day he saved a black chicken from the yard from the cook, who was going to cook dinner from it. The boy parted with the gold coin given to him by his grandmother in order to protect Chernushka. That same night he was woken up by the same chicken, which turned out to be magical. She accompanied Alyosha to the land of the Dungeon, where he received an unusual gift from the king - a small grain capable of fulfilling any desire. From that moment on, the kind and sympathetic Alyosha turned into an angry and arrogant rude man, since he had the opportunity to get everything from life without putting any effort into it. Because of his behavior, the boy lost all his friends, Chernushka and the inhabitants of the Dungeon also condemned him. But at the end of the story “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants,” the main character managed to realize his mistakes and correct the situation.

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Quotes from the book “The Black Hen, or Underground Inhabitants” by Antony Pogorelsky

“Don’t think,” answered Chernushka, “that it is so easy to recover from vices when they have already taken over us. Vices usually enter through the door and exit through a crack, and therefore, if you want to improve, you must constantly and strictly look after yourself.

The more natural abilities and gifts you have,<...>the more humble and obedient you should be. God did not give you a mind so that you could use it for evil.

Cities, by the way, have the advantage over people that they sometimes become more beautiful with age...

... to correct yourself, you need to start by putting aside pride and excessive arrogance.

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