Tolstoi is much amused because he is riding a young horse and training it. He is a great connoisseur of horses; he loves them and is a perfect horseman. He trains his horse to various paces. He showed me and Ilya Vasilevich how the horse started to gallop with the right leg. At the beginning of the ride I asked Tolstoi how to train a horse to start with this or that leg. Tolstoi explained to me how it was done, and then observed: “Once a horse leads off with a certain leg, it wants to start with the same leg next time. In a man’s life, too, custom plays an enormous part. Once a certain habit is formed, a man unconsciously tries to act in accordance with it. It is very seldom that people act in accordance with reason, and only very remarkable people do so; usually people live and act by habit. How otherwise could it be possible that moral truths, announced so long ago by the great thinkers and admitted by most people, so rarely guide their actions? Very few people overcome the habits of animal life and oppose them by the convictions of reason.” When later we drove past a beautiful wood Tolstoi said: “Once upon a time this forest belonged to Dolin-Ivansky. He was about to sell it and I wanted to buy it, but for some reason I bargained, although the price was reasonable. We did not settle the business. When I came home and thought it over, I saw that the price was reasonable and the forest good, and I sent the steward to say that I was ready to buy it. But when the steward arrived, the forest was already sold. For a long time afterwards I could not remember without annoyance that I had let that forest slip through my hands.” Then we drove by the forest called “Limonov Woods.” It is a young forest planted by Tolstoi. He had not been there for a long time and was surprised to see how everything had flourished and grown up. Tolstoi said: “Yes, it is a queer sense, that of ownership: here, too, one finds the same habit. When one analyses it in one’s own mind, the feeling disappears; but instinctively one always sees in oneself a particular interest in what was or is one’s property, although one considers ownership harmful and unnecessary.” Speaking later of the present political events Tolstoi said: “The same is true also with regard to patriotism: unconsciously one’s sympathies are on the side of Russia and her fortunes, and one catches oneself at it. But it is clear that with these internal and foreign troubles one fine day all of a sudden Russia may fall to pieces. As the saying goes: _sic transit gloria mundi_. Now it is an enormous and powerful state, and suddenly everything may go to pieces!” Tolstoi drew my attention to the fact that the road was beautifully lit up by the rays of the sun coming through the branches of the trees. He recalled that Turgenev in _Virgin Soil_ has described how Sipyagin met Mariana and Nezhdanov lit up by such rays. He asked me if I remembered the passage. I did not remember it and said: