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*SBM»*^^ ^ »^WJ1« wear any old coat or

« vjotds around--^ V^*nan£' 8imPly Sing loud^s, tide age ot hght, iVft Vo\ver st^mships, modern ^ite and the wheelbarrow, the spade ^ncanism' s,'ng" of re iork, the snorts ol the locomotive, the ^ shoveI- tf>e -and let the wife or the sister do all the cho^es°f man' etc"' riding, carry all the burdens, say all the prayers' and ^ bills! But I hold that the man who lives such a life^ iest un-Christian, loafing pagan in God's world, and needs °t praise, but instruction, if need be, with a raw-hide. Talk of priests and their full habit and their creeds. I have 'own hundreds of ecclesiastics, high and low, many of them 'nts and jolly good fellows, but I have never known a priest 'ose life and thought were not noble and divine compared (.t'1 the vaporing insipidities and absurdities and hypocrisies ^ y°Ur Tolstoys and your Whitmans and the so-called "literary"

Plaits who praise them. >,acj . nacl written thus of Tolstoy a year ago, as I have long mi'nH fr. un-it* m,r friVnH Mr. Rumelv. and othPr

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W mind to write, my friend, Mr. Rumely, and other wora JF*P«rs of the Count would have demanded more and more Tol °8''es" Within the past three months I have added to my fror^to-Vana many clippings, one of which I here give. I quote "This ^terary D*gest ol February 28th, the present year.

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.-j.^ Slye new insight to all people who have eyes: "Writte^ gedv in Tolstoy's Life.—Although so much has been "about Tolstoy, the many people in this country who are

interested in his doctrines have had little opportunity of finding out what his own countrymen think of him. 'Tolstoy, as Man and Artist,' by Dmitri Merejkowski, is the first long critic which we have had translated from the Russian. Hitherto most of the accounts of Tolstoy's manner of life which have reached American readers have been those of Tolstoyan disciples who journeyed to his home prepared to worship at the shrine of the master. Merejkowski's book is the more interesting because his point of view concerning Tolstoy is quite different from the one with which we have become familiar. In his inquiry he proves, to his own satisfaction at least, that Tolstoy has practiced on himself a colossal self-deception, and that his life, if considered as an embodiment of Christianity, has been a miserable compromise. He declares that Tolstoy is a superb pagan, who, under the cloak of simplicity, has attained a higher degree of luxury than have any of the most fashionable seekers of enjoyment; and who, instead of giving his all away, has merely shifted his responsibilities upon other shoulders. The result of Tolstoy's theories on his domestic life is described as follows:

"'Tolstoy behaves toward his wife with a touch of exactingness, reproachfulness, and even displeasure, accusing her of preventing him giving away his property and of going on bringing up the children in the old way. His wife, for her part, thinks herself in the right, and complains of such conduct on her husband's side. In her there have involuntarily sprung up a hatred and loathing of his teaching and its consequences. Between them there has even grown up a tone of mutual contradiction, the voicing of their complaints against one another. Giving away one's property to strangers and leaving one's children on the world, when no one else is disposed to do the same, she not only looks on as out of the question, but thinks it her duty as a mother to prevent. Having said as much to Bers (her brother), she added with tears in her eyes, T have hard work now; I must do everything myself, whereas formerly I was only a helper. The property and the education of the children are entirely in my hands; yet people find fault with me for doing this, and not going about begging! Should I not have gone with him if I had not had young children? But he has forgotten everything in his doctrines.'

"'And at last came the final, and scarcely credible admission.

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l«4W\», \tv X.vl^ datW«^ n<>st secret corner of his life l*t»«K*. ^ >noy<x tvottv Vmcvsc ' thoug-h h/s invariable habit A V\VW\.o "Sa^-cv to vrr\te cotftess n&, and he even now dec/ares

..'V ""^vfc n«aX wrVter of our country (Russia) shou]d have ~ /ixKsj^^A titoXQ^on oi the Russian people, a manifestation yet ^xvVxvovm axvA vum^e in our civilizationand the religious path ^Tmoce across the gulf, opened by Peter's reforms, be

T^eeTus and the people. It « not for notlung that the eyes of \re bent with such eagerness on him, not only on all he . t iar more on all he does, on his most private and personal'concerns, his family and home life. No, it is not mere A\ riosity There is too much under that roof of moment idle cur^ ^ whole future of Russian culture. No fear of

£ine too prying ought to hold us back. Has he not said himself, "I have no secrets from any one in the world. Let them oil know what I do." ,

« • \nd what does he do? "Not wishing to oppose his wife by force " says Ber, "he began to assume toward his property an ttitude of ignoring its existence; renounced his income, proceeded to shut his eyes to what became of it, and ceased to make of it except in so far as to go on living under the roof at Yasnaia'Poliana" But what does "except in so far" mean? -He carried out the word of the Lord, and left house and lands and children, "except in so far" as he still clung to them He made himself a beggar and homeless, and gave away what he had, "except in so far" as he consented, for fear of grieving his t< wfe, to keep what he had.'

"Merejkowski gives an account of the way in which the Tolstoy menage is conducted at present, of how the Countess ministers to his tastes, and everything tends to increase his comfort and well-being. We quote again:

"' "He is very fond of French perfumes and scented linen. The Countess takes care that there is always a sachet of petaldust in the drawer with his underclothes." You see the method of this enjoyment. After manure, the perfume of flowers and essences. Here is the symbol, here the point of union. Under the peasant Christian's pelisse, we get, not a hair-shirt, no; linen, lavendered and voluptuous with eau de Chypre and Parma violets.

"'That cheerful philosopher in ancient Attica who tilled a little garden with his own hands, who taught men to be easily content, to believe in nothing, either in heaven or earth, but simple enjoyment in the sunlight, flowers, a little brushwood on the hearth in winter, and in summer a little spring-water out of an earthen cup, would have recognized in Tolstoy his true and, it would seem, his sole disciple in this barbaric age, when in the midst of senseless luxury, coarse, sordid and barbaric American "comfort," we have all, long ago, forgotten the finer part of pleasure.

"'The Countess, who has, at last, ceased to quarrel about the giving up of the property, and with a sly motherly smile slips among her husband's linen a sachet with his favorite scents, is a faithful and trusty collaborator in this refinement of life. "She learns his wants from his eyes," an observer says; "she cares (or him like an untiring nurse," says another, "and only leaves him for a little while at a time." As, for many years, she has studied minutely the habits of her husband, she can see, directly Leo leaves his study, from his mere look, how he has got on with his work and what humor he is in. And if he wants anything copied she at once lays aside all the work of which her hands are always full, and though the sun should fall from the sky, yet, by a certain time the copy will have been carefully written out by her hand and laid on her husband's writing-table.

"'Even if he seems ungrateful, says that his wife is "no friend of his," and heeds her love no more than the air he breathes, yet she wants no other reward than the consciousness that he could not get on without her for a day, and that she has made him what he is. "The untiring nurse" rocks, pampers and lulls, with care and caresses, like the invisible soft strength of the

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^».».m.=»«^.»— think that the domestic life

A toNaX^j ^ottT^ed v?" is beaut'TM. idyllic. I

K^XSi^ wo \av\v Xo Vvtva witVi lolstoy s hfe, and the wife is a dream o\ Ot faitntuiness. I complain

only of the

^o*C«K« ^Ven man as a writer when compared with the

WvfcN ol ^8 declining years as a husband and a father. « at the English and American scnbblers who have made Vhero and a martyr of him. I an,» evenjnlhng to believe that m hi* earher manhood he sincerely held the theories he preaches ol self-sacrifice and quitting all worldly goods for God's truth. But no man in this age, nineteen hundred years after Jesus of Nazareth, God Incarnate, taught and lived and died for those ideas has any right to claim them as his own, except in so far as he lives up to them and dies for them, if necessary. And when he does this, or has the real spirit of doing it, he confesses himself an humble disciple of Christ.

Tolstoy may have exaggerated the sins of his young manhood but the fact that he has proved himself a moderately good father and husband is infinitely more to his credit than to write books representing modern society as a failure, or those teaching a theory of self-sacrifice and pretending to practice it, while all the time enjoying the most exquisite pleasures of said society.

Mr. Rumely is wrong when he says that Tolstoy's teachings are similar to my own and in favor of justice and truth and humanity. I believe in God, in government and in goodness. I believe in Christ as the incarnation of God. I believe in His Church as the authoritative representative of His teachings and the minister of His sacrificial life and death, and though I have

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