Naturally, I soon asked to be presented to the lady of the house, and the count escorted us through a series of rooms to a salon furnished much like any handsome apartment in Paris or St. Petersburg, where the countess, with other ladies, all in full evening dress, received us cordially. This sudden transition from the peasant cabin of the master to these sumptuous rooms of the mistress was startling; it seemed like scene-shifting at a theater. After some friendly talk, all returned to the rooms of the master of the house, where tea was served at a long table from the bubbling brazen urn--the samovar; and though there were some twenty or thirty guests, nothing could be more informal. All was simple, kindly, and unrestrained. My first question was upon the condition of the people. Our American legation had corresponded with Count Tolstoi and his family as to distributing a portion of the famine fund sent from the United States, hence this subject naturally arose at the outset. He said that the condition of the peasants was still very bad; that they had very generally eaten their draught-animals, burned portions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies, and reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting that the new commercial treaty with Germany might help matters, he thought that it would have but little effect, since only a small portion of the total product of Russian agriculture is consumed abroad. This led him to speak of some Americans and Englishmen who had visited the famine-stricken districts, and, while he referred kindly to them all, he seemed especially attracted by the Quaker John Bellows of Gloucester, England, the author of the wonderful little French dictionary. This led him to say that he sympathized with the Quakers in everything save their belief in property; that in this they were utterly illogical; that property presupposes force to protect it. I remarked that most American Quakers knew nothing of such force; that none of them had ever seen an American soldier, save during our Civil War, and that probably not one in hundreds of them had ever seen a soldier at all. He answered, "But you forget the policeman." He evidently put policemen and soldiers in the same category--as using force to protect property, and therefore to be alike abhorred.