In midsummer of 1896 I learned to know Tolstoy. It was at the time of the National Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod. Cheap excursion tickets on the railroads and river boats were to be had throughout the summer, while correspondents for foreign newspapers were given first-class passes for three months in every rod of railroad trackage in the country. It was an opportunity for exercising _Wanderlust_ in style such as had never before come my way. Baedeker's little book on the Russian language was bought, introductions to friends in St. Petersburg were secured, and away I went to spend preliminarily a week or so as a field-hand, or in any other capacity that I was equal to, on Tolstoy's farm, at Yasnaya Polyana, an estate about one hundred and fifty miles south of Moscow. At that time I was not sure about the railroad pass. In St. Petersburg, friends kindly put me in the way of getting it, and on I went to Moscow, and, before the summer was over, to hundreds of other towns and villages in different parts of the Empire. On two hundred and fifty Russian words, or thereabouts, my passport, free railroad transportation, and perhaps $75, I traveled, before I got back to Berlin, about twenty-five thousand miles. I kept my hotel expenses down by living on trains. First-class railroad accommodations include a bed. So when night came I calmly took my berth in a train bound in any direction long enough to secure me a good rest. In the morning I got out and looked about me, or rode on as I liked. This proceeding also saved me passport dues at hotels, an item of considerable expense in Russia if one does much traveling. My meals were found at the stations, which provide the best railroad restaurant service found anywhere. With all the saving, sight-seeing and riding, however, my vacation over, I was heartily glad to return to Germany, and for months afterwards my _Wanderlust_ was delightfully under control. By all odds the most interesting national feature that Russia allowed me to see was Count Tolstoy. The Tsar, the museums, the palaces, the large estates, the great unworked _Ninghik_--these men and things were entertaining, but they did not take my fancy as did the novelist and would-be philanthropist. And yet I had never read any of Tolstoy's novels before meeting him, and my notions of his altruism were vague, indeed--about what the ideas are of people who have never been in Russia or seen Tolstoy, and who, on learning that you have been there and met him ask immediately: "Say, _on the level_, is he a fakir or not?"