Unfortunately, after my inspection of the Jewish agricultural colonies, which fully confirmed the favorable reports the count had received of them, my investigations led me to the Southern and Polish provinces, and consumed so much of my limited time that a return North was impossible. And so I never got to see the count again. And I never heard from him. Neither my report, which I sent to him in writing, nor my other communications to him, written in Russia and outside of it, have brought from him a reply. Never a line from him even in answer to the information sent him that the National Farm School, which he had so strongly urged, had been founded. Never an acknowledgment from him of the early annual reports of the School that were sent him to show the headway it was making. Probable reason of silence. The heartiness of his reception of me, his almost affectionate farewell, his deep interest in my mission and his earnest invitation that I repeat my visit to him, preclude the thought that I was forgotten by him or became indifferent to him after my departure. There is but one explanation--an explanation strengthened by similar experiences of others in connection with him--none of my communications ever reached him. I was not wanted in Russia. I was a _persona non grata_ to the government; my name was blacklisted, and my mail fell under the ban of the censor. With him in spirit under Poverty Tree. But, if my mail has never reached him, my thoughts have been with him often. Many a time have I sat with him, in spirit, under that _Poverty Tree_. And yet more often will I sit with him there in the future, now that that site has become _Holy Ground_. Has become his grave. Gladly do I forgive the church of Russia many an outrage or blunder she has perpetrated or permitted to be perpetrated, for the one good act she has performed--that of refusing Tolstoy sepulture in what she is pleased to call "consecrated ground." She thus obliged him to designate as his last resting-place a spot that was one of the dearest on earth to him, a spot that was intimately associated with his life's philosophy, a spot located within a confine wherein he ruled more mightily and more exaltedly than any Czar that ever wielded scepter in vast Russia, where he wrote those epochal books of his which are destined some day to become of the basal elements of the religion of the future. No Czarian funeral more solemn than Tolstoy's.