And more yet than what the peasants gave to him he gave to them in return. He gave them himself, and, in the end, he sacrificed even his life for them. He found them down-trodden serfs, he endeavored to make free men of them. He found them cowed and bowed, he taught them to walk and stand erect. He found them unbefriended, he became a brother to them. He found them wretchedly poor, he renounced pleasure and treasure, luxury and ease, to lessen as much as he could the distance between them and himself. He dressed as they dressed, and labored as they labored, and, as far as permitted, ate the kind of food they ate. He found them stalking in darkness, he brightened their way for them. He found them ignorant and at the mercy of priest and government official, he became their advocate, dared to brave an all-powerful autocracy in the defense of their rights. He started schools for them. He gave up writing for the thousands of select readers that he might write for the millions of illiterate peasants and other laborers. He wrote special booklets for them, and sold them at a loss, at one-half cent a copy, stories, legends, symbolical tales, moral plays and religious tracts, all fitted for their minds and stations, and intended to deepen in them the law of love and right. Died believing he had failed. To have sacrificed and renounced and dared as much and as long as he had, and, in the end, to find what he found, in his three days observation of village miseries and outrages, was more than his great heart could stand. It broke. He was eighty-two years old. He could no longer continue the fight. He could no longer look upon the suffering of the unfortunates, nor upon the wrongs of the world, nor upon the extravagances even within his own family. He regarded his whole life-work a dismal failure. He knew of no other balm for his bleeding heart than flight from the world to some secluded spot, there, as a hermit, to await the end, which he knew was not far distant. Truly pathetic were his farewell lines to his wife: "I cannot continue longer to live a life of ease and luxury while others starve and suffer. Like many other old men, I retire from the world to await my end in solitude. I ask that you do not seek my place of sojourn, and that you do not come to it if it be discovered. I beg forgiveness for the grief that I may cause you." Characteristic of great reformers.