“Do you read Garrison?” Tolstoi asked, as my wandering eyes rested on the portrait of our own champion of liberty. “Do you read Channing, Thoreau, Emerson? I always ask Americans about those four great men. They should be read by the young men of to-day.” A tall candle burning on the table by his right side threw its restless gleams across the old man’s rugged face, and involuntarily my mind ran incredulously over the intensely human career whose latter days are now marked by such inspiring serenity. We could not long keep off the subject of Russia and her troubles, however, and at last I ventured to ask him what was his interpretation of the movement of things in Russia at the moment. Tolstoi pointed to an old volume of Rousseau’s “Émile” lying on a table at the other side of the room, and asked me to bring it to him. Turning over the pages of Book IV till he found the paragraph he sought, he paused, then read very slowly and with emphasis, these sentences: “On dit qu’il falloit une révélation pour apprendre aux hommes la manière dont Dieu vouloit être servi; on assigne en préserve la diversité des cultes bizarres qu’ils ont institué, et l’on ne voit pas que cette diversité même vient de la fantaisie des révélations. Dès que les peuples se sont avisés de faire parler Dieu, chacun l’a fait parler à sa mode et lui a fait dire ce qu’il a voulu; si l’on n’eût écouté que ce que Dieu dit au cœur de l’homme, il n’y auroit jamais eu qu’une religion sur la terre.” The last sentence he read twice, and then handed the book across the table that I might absorb the passage. “That is what we have all got to learn,” he said, “to listen to the words God speaks to us in our hearts. We need no other religion or philosophy than this. We need no institution like a church. This message is for the people of America as well as for Russia, and the whole significance of the present terrible situation in Russia is that the Russian people are being brought to the point where every other channel will be closed and only by turning to God will they be able to save themselves.” In other words, Tolstoi sees, as every one in Russia must see, that the drift of things is toward an abyss, and Tolstoi reads into this tendency a deeply religious meaning; he accepts it as part of a Divine plan, and he firmly believes that the Russian people will come to look upon their situation as a call from God to discard their ancient superstitions and to inaugurate a new era in which each individual will endeavor to readjust his life into conformity with the infinite.