Among the things to which special and continued attention had to be given by the legation was the Chicago Exposition. I was naturally desirous to see it a success; indeed, it was my duty to do everything possible to promote it. The magnificent plans which the Chicago people had developed and were carrying out with such wonderful energy interested thinking Russians. But presently came endeavors which might easily have brought the whole enterprise into disrepute; for some of the crankish persons who always hang on the skirts of such enterprises had been allowed to use official stationery, and they had begun writing letters, and even instructions, to American diplomatic agents abroad. The first of these which attracted my attention was one requesting me to ask the Empress to write a book in the shape of a "Report on Women's Work in Russia," careful instructions being given as to how and at what length she must write it. A letter also came from one of these quasi-officials at Chicago, not requesting, but instructing, me to ask the Emperor to report to his bureau on the condition of the empire; funnily enough, this "instruction" was evidently one of several, and they had been ground out so carelessly that the one which I was instructed to deliver to the Emperor was addressed to the "King of Holland." It was thus made clear that this important personage at Chicago, who usurped the functions of the Secretary of State, had not even taken the trouble to find out that there was no such person as a "King of Holland," the personage whom he vaguely had in mind being, no doubt, the Queen Regent of the Netherlands. Soon there followed another of these quasi-instructions, showing another type of crankishness. Beginning with the weighty statement that "the school-boys of every country are the future men of that country," it went on with a declaration that it had been decided to hold a convention of the school-children of the world at Chicago, in connection with the Exposition, and ended by instructing me to invite to its deliberations the school-children of Russia. Of course I took especial care not to communicate any of these things to any Russian: to have done so would have made the Exposition, instead of the admiration, the laughing-stock of the empire; but I wrote a letter to the assistant secretary of state, Mr. Quincy, who presently put an end to these vagaries. One is greatly struck in Russia by the number of able and gifted men and women scattered through Russian society, and at the remarkable originality of some of them. The causes of this originality I touch in my chapter on Tolstoi.