into a better world--and extolling a "faith" which has always been the most effective pretext for bloodshed and oppression. The long, slow, every-day work of developing a better future for his countrymen is to be done by others far less gifted than Tolstoi. His paradoxes will be forgotten; but his devoted life, his noble thoughts, and his lofty ideals will, as centuries roll on, more and more give life and light to the new Russia. CHAPTER XXXVIII OFFICIAL LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG--1892-1894 The difficulties of a stranger seeking information in Russia seem at times insurmountable. First of these is the government policy of suppressing news. Foreign journals come to ordinary subscribers with paragraphs and articles rubbed out with pumice or blotted out with ink; consequently our Russian friends were wont to visit the legation, seeking to read in our papers what had been erased in their own, and making the most amusing discoveries as to the stupidity of the official censorship: paragraphs perfectly harmless being frequently blotted out, and really serious attacks on the government unnoticed. Very striking, as showing control over the newspaper press, was an occurrence during my first summer at Helsingfors. One day our family doctor came in, and reported a rumor that an iron-clad monitor had sunk, the night before, on its way across the gulf from Reval. Soon the story was found to be true. A squadron of three ships had started; had encountered a squall; and in the morning one of them--an old-fashioned iron-clad monitor--was nowhere to be seen. She had sunk with all on board. Considerable speculation concerning the matter arose, and sundry very guarded remarks were ventured to the effect that the authorities at Cronstadt would have been wiser had they not allowed the ship to go out in such a condition that the first squall would send her to the bottom. This discussion continued for about a week, when suddenly the proper authorities served notice upon the press that nothing more must be said on the subject. This mandate was obeyed; the matter was instantly dropped; nothing more was said; and, a year or two afterward, on my inquiring of Admiral Makharoff whether anything had ever been discovered regarding the lost ship and its crew, he answered in the negative. But more serious efforts than these were made to control thought. The censorship of books was even more strongly, and, if possible, more foolishly, exercised. At any of the great bookshops one could obtain, at once, the worst publications of the Paris press; but the really substantial and thoughtful books were carefully held back. The average Russian, in order to read most of these better works, must be specially authorized to do so.