Then at dinner Tolstoi told us two anecdotes from his life. The first was how he ate some earth-worms (Tolstoi told it because Alexandra Lvovna and Ilya Lvovich’s children were going fishing). Tolstoi said he was carrying the worms in one hand, and a loaf of black bread in the other. He had finished eating the bread, and, thinking of something else, put the worms in his mouth and began chewing them, and for some time could not think what mess he had put in his mouth. Tolstoi said: “I remember the taste of them as if I were eating them now.” My wife asked him if it was very unpleasant. “The taste of earth; but I don’t advise you to taste it.” Some one sneezed and Tolstoi told another story. “I used to sneeze very loudly; once at night I woke and felt I was going to sneeze immediately, and as Sophie Andreevna was going to have a baby, I was afraid to frighten her by sneezing. Half asleep I cried out: ‘Sonia, I am going to sneeze!’ Sophie Andreevna of course woke up and was frightened, and I instantly fell asleep without having sneezed.” Tolstoi also talked about Belogolovy’s _Reminiscences_.[9] He seemed to Tolstoi a narrow-minded man. Speaking of the terrible impression made by his description of the diseases and deaths of Nekrasov, Turgenev, and Saltikov, Tolstoi said: “How they dreaded death! And then there were those horrible disgusting details of their illnesses, particularly Nekrasov’s.” Last winter my wife and I stayed at Yasnaya Polyana, and, when we had to leave, Tolstoi was sitting in his room with P. A. Boulanger. We came into the room to say good-bye, and probably they were talking of Boulanger’s family affairs. We entered just as Tolstoi was saying: “ ... if people only said more often: ‘Do you remember?’ People should make it a rule that if one person says or does something wrong in the heat of a quarrel, or when one is angry, the other should say: ‘Do you remember?’” Tolstoi noticed my wife and me and said: “Now, you young people, you ought to make that your rule! No one can be such a friend as one’s wife, a real friend. In marriage it is either paradise, or simple hell; there is no ‘purgatory.’” Boulanger said that generally it was a case of purgatory. Tolstoi thought for a time and then said with a sigh: “Yes, perhaps, unfortunately.” ... That same evening, looking at Andrey Lvovich’s little girl, Sonechka, playing on the floor, Tolstoi said: “Faust speaks of the rare moment of which one can say: ‘Verweile doch, du bist so schön!’ Now there it is, that moment!” (Tolstoi pointed to the little girl.) “There is a perfectly happy, pure, and innocent moment.” _June 20th._ Some time ago, in May, Tolstoi said: