“The way I was wounded,” he replied. “Our regiment had not been long exposed to the fire when I decided it was too hot for comfort. I looked all about for some place of shelter. At last I espied a small gully or ravine, so suddenly running toward it I leaped in--only to find my general and my colonel there before me! Well--there wasn’t room for all three of us, so we began to nudge and push each other, for none wanted to get into the open again. Finally the general said to me: ‘Captain, you are not showing becoming deference to your superior officers, sir.’ At that I had to crawl out. As I did so a shell exploded near by and a piece of it hit me in the forehead causing my wound!” * * * * * The second night after my arrival at the house where I was a guest I was taken over to Yasnaya Poliana. Tolstoi had been informed of my presence in the neighborhood, and had graciously suggested to my friend that she bring me to see him. The fast-falling, late autumn night was settling over the snow-fields and silver woods as we climbed the knoll upon which Yasnaya Poliana house stands. In summer the place must have a fascinating charm, for all the elements of a beautiful country park are there--flower-beds and wildwood, orchards, groves and arbored walks, a bit of water, fields rolling toward distant horizons, broad sky and vistas that hold one. Surmounting the knoll, a pleasant house, large enough without being grand, comfortable without pretension. At the door a black poodle barked a welcome. A man-servant helped us to unload the heavy garments we wore against the cold of a Russian November night. With not unexpected directness we were taken straight to the count’s study. There he sat--near a table-desk which was littered with piles of letters and papers. “Good evening,” he called cheerily and quite as though I were an old friend. His hands, which were extended in welcome, were warm as if the fires of his strong life and body still burned fiercely, as when he commanded men on Sebastopol bastions, ranged over the unconquered Caucasus, and hunted with the most daring of his comrades through great Russian forests. He had been horseback-riding in the afternoon, he told us. Surely few men carry the weight of seventy-eight years with more vigor. The first words of greeting over, he began to ask about his friends in America, men whom he knows personally or by reputation. A conversation with a neighbor from one’s own home town on a chance meeting in a foreign land would scarcely have been different. There was a delightful eagerness for word-of-mouth news. Names of men in New York slipped as easily from his tongue as from one of their own circle. Shelves of books in many languages walled the room from floor to eye level, while above hung portraits of many thinkers who have, or should have, influenced the world. Prominent among them Henry George and William Lloyd Garrison.