away from it all, to be comfortable yourself whether others are or not. "Think of your wife and children, of the home you have made. Is it your right to sneak away from all this just to make yourself look and sound consistent? Have you not duties toward your wife and children to observe? Do you think you can throw over all that you were to them and they to you merely to satisfy your vanity--vanity, Lyoff, and nothing more. You are vain in your very sneaking. You insist upon appearing all that you think you are. "Back, back, back! Remember your wife and children. Remember that you have no right to make them think and live the way you would. Remember that to sneak away is cowardly. Back, Lyoff Nicolayevitch!" And back the old man has trudged, to take up his burden as a citizen. One night he talked with me about my tramps. He asked me why I had made them, how the vagabonds lived, and why I had not continued to live among them. I told him the truth. He stroked his white beard and looked dreamily at the chess-board. "If I were younger," he said at last, "I should like to make a tramp trip with you here in Russia. Years ago I used to wander about among them a good deal. Now, I am too old--too old," and he ran his hands rheumatically up and down his legs. When leaving Yasnaya Polyana, I asked the Count's neighbor in whose house I had slept whether there was anything I could do for him or the Count during my travels. My railroad pass was good yet for a number of weeks, and it occurred to me that, perhaps, during my wanderings I could run some errand for Tolstoy. At the time, I had no thought that my proposition could get him, myself or anybody else into trouble. To be sure, Mr. Breckenridge, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, had given me, in addition to my passport, a general letter "To whom it may concern," recommending me to everybody as a bona fide American citizen and gentleman, and bespeaking for me in advance the friendly offices of all with whom I might be thrown. But I failed utterly to see how I was going back on this letter in offering to render a service that the Count, or rather his neighbor, asked me to render.