"They say: all roads lead to Rome, "Leo Cassil, author of the novel Conduit and Schwambrania (1930), repeats the popular saying, and suddenly continues: "In the gymnasium, all roads lead to the conduit." What could compare in the gymnasium environment of the pre-revolutionary years, which are discussed in the story, with the great city that attracts thousands of pilgrims? It's just a school magazine with notes on student behavior. It was called the conduit. This word has more than a century of history in the Russian language. At the beginning of the XIX century, the noun conduit came into use with the meaning: "behavior, lifestyle, in reasoning, states and actions" (A new word interpreter arranged alphabetically, containing various foreign utterances and technical terms found in the Russian language. St. Petersburg, 1804. Part 2). Its derivative-the adjective conduit in combination with the noun list was actively used in the military department: "Until 1862, this was the name of special lists compiled about the behavior and abilities of officers" (Brockhaus F. A., Efron N. A. Encyclopedia. St. Petersburg, 1895, vol. 30). If the behavior of military personnel (after 1862) ceased to be noted in the conduit list, then the misdeeds of students, on the contrary, were reflected in it. This list (magazine or book) was called briefly in the school environment - conduit. The word was borrowed from the French language (conduit "behavior") and underwent metonymic transfer. Getting into the conduit meant falling out of favor with the teacher and being punished. The Book of Sorrows, the black book, was dubbed the conduit by seminarians, emphasizing its bleak purpose. In an anonymous letter to the editor of Osnova magazine, the author, complaining about the conditions in which the student's life takes place, mentioned the black book: "In no case can our police correctly judge the behavior of students. If, for example, a student is not found once, twice, or three times in his apar ... Read more