TOLSTOI--ODESSA--CONSTANTINOPLE A visit to Russia’s grand old man--An interesting yamschik--Tolstoi’s views on the present struggle--His world-wide interests--The varied and interesting Tolstoi household--On to the Crimea--Odessa--The Black Hundred organization--Promoting massacres--Quitting Odessa during a dock strike--A Black Hundred crew--Difficulties at sea--Back to Odessa--A fresh start--A motley cargo of passengers--Bokhara pilgrims bound for Mecca, Central Asia Jews journeying to Jerusalem, German Lutherans--Crossing the Black Sea--Arrival in Constantinople. A sojourn in Russia seemed incomplete without a pilgrimage to Tolstoi. Russia’s grand old man attracts travelers from all corners of the earth, and though it seemed an unpardonable intrusion for an unheard-of citizen of a distant country to call upon the seer in his own home, to draw upon his strength and time, I was deeply grateful to receive an invitation to visit a dear friend and disciple of his who lives on the estate of the count’s eldest daughter; for I knew that this would mean a happy meeting with the one man in all Russia I desired most to see. The year had turned November when this invitation came, and I was already looking forward to quitting the land of struggle and chaos. Tula, the town of Tolstoi’s home is almost the exact center of European Russia, and is reached from Moscow. “Yasnaya Poliana,” Tolstoi’s house, is located something over two hours’ drive from Tula station. Yasnaya Poliana, that is to say, “Pleasant Clearing in the Woods,” and never did the home of the prophet seem more fittingly named than now, when confusion and chaos roll unchanneled from the Baltic eastward, from European frontiers northward, covering an empire. Tolstoi looks across the seas of tumult, his hoary head towering above the wreckage, his superbly discerning vision penetrating a beyond still hid from the masses of his countrymen. And it is also true that the elements of to-day are as clear before him as before other men. He sees them all: an incompetent government, a struggling but thus far incapable revolution, twenty-seven millions of starving peasants, a disloyal navy, an untrustworthy army, a paper constitution and a reactionary régime. All these things he sees, views them calmly, and picks out a clear line of progress that leads to a goal where all of the black road will be justified. Of him, surely, is it true, “he has a faith that meets a thousand cheats, yet drops no jot of faith.” Tolstoi alone among Russians to-day is able to see his country’s plight in perspective.