“Yet as some one said: if my work is abused by every one, it means that there is something in it. If all praise it, it means that it is bad; but if some praise it very much, and others dislike it very much, then it is first-rate. According to this theory Gorky’s works are first-rate. Well, it may be so.” ... A blind man came to Tolstoi, and Tolstoi was very much interested in him. The blind man was trying to get into a school for the blind, so as to complete his education, and Tolstoi wanted to help him. The blind man intended to give an account of his life. After lunch we were going for a walk. Tolstoi was talking to the blind man. Then he took him to the kitchen to give him some food, and said good-bye to him. The blind man said to him: “I should like to go on talking to you.” Tolstoi replied: “Later, perhaps, I will talk to you again.” We went for a walk. But before reaching the gate Tolstoi said that he had changed his mind and would return home. Sophie Andreevna observed: “He probably regrets having left the blind man.” And it was true. We walked for a long time, and when we got back Tolstoi was still sitting with the blind man. Tolstoi said to me later: “The blind man told me many legends. One of them I never heard before: “‘Once upon a time Christ and Peter the Apostle walked in the country and saw an old peasant making a fence out of reeds. Christ asked him: “Why, father, are you making such a weak fence of reeds?” and the peasant replied: “I am old, it will last my lifetime.” After that God saw to it that people should not know their age.’ He also told me another legend, which I had heard before but in a different version: “‘A just old man once lived in the woods. And people came to him and said: “Why do you never go to church?” The old man listened to them and went with them. But while they took a boat to cross the river, the old man walked upon the water. They arrived and went into the church, but inside the church the devils stretched a skin on the floor and wrote down the names of the sinners on it. The old man looked and looked at this, then called the devils bad names, and they wrote his name down. On returning home he was unable to walk upon the water, but had to take the boat.’” Tolstoi said: “It is time for me to die, and I have a whole mass of subjects, and even a new one to-day. I have a whole long list of them.” ... Tolstoi is going to expound in an artistic form Buddha’s teaching, “Ta Twam Asi,” the meaning of which is that in every man and his actions one can always recognize oneself. Tolstoi recalled the following: “When I was taken for the first time to a box in the Grand Theatre as a young child I saw nothing: I did not know that it was necessary to look at the stage sideways, and I looked straight in front of me at the opposite boxes.” _August 12th._ I spent the 7th and 8th in Yasnaya Polyana. M. S. Sukhotin was talking about Count Bludov. Tolstoi said: