Stopping suddenly in his conversation with his wife, and begging us to excuse him for leaving us, I asked him whether he knew where my bag was put, as I wanted to get to my writing material for the purpose of dropping a line to the American Minister. Mr. White had feared that, not being wanted in Russia, I might get into trouble soon after leaving the protection of our embassy in St. Petersburg, and he had enjoined upon me that I keep in constant touch with him, as well as with the American consuls, while in the interior. The count informing me that my bag had been placed into his working-room, on the ground floor of the house, I had a glimpse of the room in which some of the greatest writings of our time, of all times, first saw the light of day. It was a small room with an ordinary, bare floor somewhat the worse for wear, with a vaulted ceiling, and with very thick walls that gave it the aspect of a mediaeval cloister cell. I have since read that at one time it was a storeroom, and that from the hooks in the ceiling were formerly suspended the ham supply for the family. Besides a crude writing-desk and a few chairs, there seemed to be no other furniture in the room, and its only ornaments, as far as I can recall, were some farm implements, tools, and seed bags. The desk was littered over with books and papers, and showed the kind of disorder one would expect of a genius like Tolstoy. Favored suppression of lawyers. Upon my return to the tree, I found the count in conversation with my companion, who told me later that upon Tolstoy's asking him what his occupation was, and upon his replying that he had graduated from the law-school of the University of Moscow, and that, owing to restrictive laws against Jews, he was not permitted to practice, the count had remarked that the government had done at least one good thing, it had diminished the number of lawyers. Amazed at the amount of poverty in New York. Resuming my seat alongside of him, he asked me whether it was true that New York expended as much as one hundred thousand dollars daily in public charity. I told him that it probably was true. He then returned to his discussion on the appalling contrast between the very rich and the very poor of the large cities in Europe and America. The rich, he said, would never be as rich as they are nor the poor as poor if the latter were scattered as farmers over the land. It is their congregating in large numbers in the cities, he said, that makes possible the extensive industries and commercial enterprises which enslave them, and which build up the great fortunes of the rich. Belittled his own novels.