On my speaking of this, he said he thought that any one, when asked for money, ought to give it. Arguing against this doctrine, I said that in the United States there are virtually no beggars, and I might have gone on to discuss the subject from the politico-economical point of view, showing how such indiscriminate almsgiving in perpetual driblets is sure to create the absurd and immoral system which one sees throughout Russia,--hordes of men and women who are able to take care of themselves, and who ought to be far above beggary, cringing and whining to the passers-by for alms; but I had come to know the man well enough to feel sure that a politico-economical argument would slide off him like water from a duck's back, so I attempted to take him upon another side, and said: "In the United States there are virtually no beggars, though my countrymen are, I really believe, among the most charitable in the world." To this last statement he assented, referring in a general way to our shipments of provisions to aid the famine-stricken in Russia. "But," I added, "it is not our custom to give to beggars save in special emergencies." I then gave him an account of certain American church organizations which had established piles of fire-wood and therefore enabled any able-bodied tramp, by sawing or cutting some of it, to earn a good breakfast, a good dinner, and, if needed, a good bed, and showed him that Americans considered beggary not only a great source of pauperism, but as absolutely debasing to the beggar himself, in that it puts him in the attitude of a suppliant for that which, if he works as he ought, he can claim as his right; that to me the spectacle of Count Tolstoi virtually posing as a superior being, while his fellow-Russians came crouching and whining to him, was not at all edifying. To this view of the case he listened very civilly. Incidentally I expressed wonder that he had not traveled more. He then spoke with some disapprobation of travel. He had lived abroad for a time, he said, and in St. Petersburg a few years, but the rest of his life had been spent mainly in Moscow and the interior of Russia. The more we talked together, the more it became clear that this last statement explained some of his main defects. Of all distinguished men that I have ever met, Tolstoi seems to me most in need of that enlargement of view and healthful modification of opinion which come from meeting men and comparing views with them in different lands and under different conditions. This need is all the greater because in Russia there is no opportunity to discuss really important questions. Among the whole one hundred and twenty millions of people there is no public body in which the discussion of large public questions is allowed; the press affords no real opportunity for discussion; indeed, it is more than doubtful whether such discussion would be allowed to any effective extent even in private correspondence or at one's own fireside.