A good illustration of Tolstoy's irresponsibility on the estate, or what he meant to be such, is the way he invited me to stop one night at his house. I had gone swimming with the boys to a pool perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house, and it was getting to be time for me to know whether I was to sleep at the Tolstoy's or in the neighbor's barn. While we were drying and dressing ourselves, I heard a voice in the brushwood near-by saying: "Meester Fleent, my wife invites you to spend the night with us." It was the Count himself, who had come all that distance to tell me that his wife had told him that he was to seek me out, and deliver her invitation, not his. I shall always remember his face as it appeared through the twigs, and the errand-boy accent in his voice and manner. I have never before seen greatness in such a humble posture. It was openly said to me by one of the Count's friends that this humility has given the old gentleman considerable trouble, in its acquirement as well as in its exercise. Probably we shall know much more about all this when the Count's Journal is published. I learned this much on the spot: Tolstoy feels very keenly the seeming inconsistency of his life, the fact that he cannot make his altruistic notions harmonize with his daily life. His chagrin has, on one or two occasions, nearly made a coward of him. At night, when no one was looking, he has slunk away toward Moscow, like a tramp, to be himself somewhere. But always, before he has got far, a voice has said to him: "Lyoff Nicolayevitch, you are afraid. You dread the remarks of the crowd. You shrink on hearing that you preach what you don't practice. You are trying to run away from it all, to be comfortable yourself whether others are or not.

"Think of your wife and children, of the home you have made. Is it your right to sneak away from all this just to make yourself look and sound consistent? Have you not duties toward your wife and children to observe? Do you think you can throw over all that you were to them and they to you merely to satisfy your vanity—vanity, Lyoff, and nothing more. You are vain in your very sneaking. You insist upon appearing all that you think you are.

"Back, back, back! Remember your wife and children. Remember that you have no right to make them think and live the way you would. Remember that to sneak away is cowardly. Back, Lyoff Nicolayevitch!" And back the old man has trudged, to take up his burden as a citizen.

One night he talked with me about my tramps. He asked me why I had made them, how the vagabonds lived, and why I had not continued to live among them. I told him the truth. He stroked his white beard and looked dreamily at the chess-board.

"If I were younger," he said at last, "I should like to make a tramp trip with you here in Russia. Years ago I used to wander about among them a good deal. Now, I am too old—too old," and he ran his hands rheumatically up and down his legs.

When leaving Yasnaya Polyana, I asked the Count's neighbor in whose house I had slept whether there was anything I could do for him or the Count during my travels. My railroad pass was good yet for a number of weeks, and it occurred to me that, perhaps, during my wanderings I could run some errand for Tolstoy. At the time, I had no thought that my proposition could get him, myself or anybody else into trouble. To be sure, Mr. Breckenridge, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, had given me, in addition to my passport, a general letter "To whom it may concern," recommending me to everybody as a bona fide American citizen and gentleman, and bespeaking for me in advance the friendly offices of all with whom I might be thrown. But I failed utterly to see how I was going back on this letter in offering to render a service that the Count, or rather his neighbor, asked me to render.

When it came time to go, the neighbor handed me a large sealed envelope, containing letters, which I was to deliver, if possible, into the hands of one Prince Chilkoff, a nephew I believe of the then Minister of Railways, who was temporarily banished to a rural community in the Baltic Provinces, about two hundred miles from St. Petersburg. I knew nothing about the Prince, or what he had done to offend the powers that be. What the letters contained, was, of course, a private matter into which I knew enough not to inquire. There was a promise in the undertaking which attracted me, and I willingly accepted the commission. Arriving in St. Petersburg I called on Mr. Breckenridge and happened to mention the errand that I was on. I told him that Chilkoff was banished in the sense that he had to live within given boundaries, but that I hardly thought he had done anything very serious, adding that his uncle was one of the Ministers of State. All that I know to-day about young Chilkoff's offense was that he was alleged to have been mixed up too intimately for his own good with the Donkhobors and other more or less tabooed religious sects in the Caucasus.

At first Mr. Breckenridge did not see anything out of the way in my errand, and very kindly offered to assist me officially in seeing the Prince, i.e., he suggested that we openly ask for governmental permission to proceed to the Prince's home. Then I mentioned the secret package of letters. The Minister's manner changed. "Suppose you dine with me to-night," he said, "and we will discuss those letters." I did so, and the upshot of the meeting was that the package of letters was ordered back to Yasnaya Polyana. At the time it seemed a pretty humiliating trip to be sent on, but I am glad now that I did not shirk it. "I have recommended you as a gentleman to the Russian government and people," said the Minister, "both in the letter I gave you to the Minister of Finance when you were getting the correspondent's pass and in the later one of a general character. For you to undertake secret missions of this character may very easily make the government wonder whether I knew what constitutes a gentleman when I gave you those letters."

I have had to eat a number of different kinds of humble pie in my day, and tramp life let me into some of the inner recesses of humiliation that no one but a tramp ever knows about; but no journey has ever made me feel quite so cheap and small as that return trip from St. Petersburg to Tula, the railway station where visitors to Yasnaya Polyana leave the train. I telegraphed ahead advising the Count's neighbor of my coming, and expected that he would meet me at the station. What was my surprise, on arriving at Tula, to find the old Count himself waiting for me.

"Ah! Meester Fleent," he exclaimed as I got off the train and greeted him, "have you brought me news from Prince Chilkoff?"

I wished at the time that I could sink out of sight under the platform, so pathetically eager was the Count's expectancy. There were only a few moments to spare, and I clumsily blurted out the truth, trying at the same time to explain how sorry I was. The Count calmly opened the envelope and glanced at the letters.

"Oh, it wouldn't have mattered," he said, and after shaking hands, went back to his house. He neither seemed vexed nor embarrassed. A suggestion of a tired look came into his face—he had ridden seventeen versts—that was all.

One of his "disciples," referring to this affair and my connection with it, some weeks later, ventured the statement that I had "funked" in the matter. I hardly think the Count felt this way about it, whatever else he may have thought. At the time, however, as he rode away on his horse, the letters tucked carelessly under his blouse, I would have given a good deal to know exactly what was in his mind. I remember very accurately what was in mine—a resolution, that, whatever else I did or did not do in life, I would never accept an official letter to the effect that I was a gentleman and then proceed to do something which was likely to get the letter-writer into trouble. "Either leave such letters alone," I counseled myself, "and be your own interpreter of gentlemanliness, or know, before accepting them, what will be expected of you."

Tolstoy, no doubt, has long since forgotten this episode, but I never will. In a way it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I felt that I had spoiled my experience at Yasnaya Polyana. I outgrew this feeling, however, and often think now of my visit to the Count and his family as I did when I drove away to Tula in the two-wheeled cart. I likened myself at the time to a dog "caught with the goods on," so to speak, and slinking away with his tail between his legs, but with the "goods" held tight in his mouth. Something, I know not what, unless it was the sweet peace and kindliness of the Count and his surroundings, seemed such forbidden fruit for me of my tempestuous career to taste of, that I felt very much as I used to feel as a boy when caught trespassing in other people's orchards. It did not seem right that one who had been through what I had should be allowed to enter into such an atmosphere of good cheer. Nevertheless, I was glad that entrance had not been denied me, and made many solemn resolutions to profit by the experience. Whether the resolutions have been kept with the fervor and determination that animated me in 1896, I would rather not say. But one remembrance is as vivid and dear to me to-day as when I rode away in the cart: the Count and his desire to do the right thing. "If to be like him," I have often caught myself saying, "makes one a fakir, then let us all be fakirs as quickly as possible." Unpractical, yes, in some things; a visionary, perhaps; a "literary" reformer, also perhaps. But my simple testimony about him and his is that I have yet to spend ten days in a gentler and sweeter neighborhood than those I enjoyed in and about Yasnaya Polyana.