Then A. M. Sukhotin, a man over seventy, read aloud Turgenev’s _Old Portraits_ superbly. Tolstoi did not remember the story, and was in great delight over it. He said: “It is only after reading all these moderns that one really appreciates Turgenev.” Tolstoi remembered Turgenev with great love. He said, in passing: “When Turgenev died I wanted to read a paper about him. I wanted especially, in view of the misunderstandings that there had been between us, to remember and relate all the good that was so abundant in him, and to tell what I loved in him. The lecture was not given. Dolgorukov did not allow it.” The conversation turned on Chekhov and Gorky. Tolstoi as usual praised Chekhov’s artistic gift very highly. The lack of a definite world conception grieves him in Chekhov; and in this respect Tolstoi prefers Gorky. Of Gorky Tolstoi said: “You know what he is from his works. Gorky’s great and very serious essential defect is a poorly developed sense of proportion, and this is extremely important. I pointed out this defect to Gorky himself, and as an instance I drew his attention to his misuse of the method of animating inanimate things. Then Gorky said that in his opinion it was a good method, and gave an instance of it in his story _Malva_, where it says: ‘the sea laughed.’ I replied to him that, if on certain occasions the method might be very successful, nevertheless one ought not to abuse it.” Yesterday Ushakov asked Tolstoi about Gromeka. Tolstoi and Tatyana Lvovna spoke a great deal about him. Tolstoi said: “He was a sympathetic, passionate, and gifted man. He shot himself when still a young man, it was said because he was mentally deranged.” Tatyana Lvovna says, by the way, that Gromeka was her first admirer and proposed to her when she was sixteen. Tolstoi values Gromeka’s criticism very much. He said: “It was a pleasure to me that a man who sympathized with me could see _even_ in _War and Peace_ and in _Anna Karenin_ a great deal of what I was afterwards to say and write.” Tolstoi also said: “When I wrote the story _What Men Live by_, Fet said, ‘Well, what do people live by? By money, of course.’” I observed that Fet had probably said it in joke. Tolstoi replied: “No, it was his conviction. And, as often happens, what people try very stubbornly to get, they do get. Fet all his life long wanted to become rich, and he became rich. His brothers and sisters, it seems, went out of their minds, and all their fortunes came to him.” Fet wrote in Tatyana Lvovna’s album that the unhappiest day of his life was the one when he saw that he was going to be ruined. I talked a good deal with Tolstoi to-day. Tolstoi said about current events: