If he can establish the fact that in the 200,000 words or more, which I have written for the Magazine, a grave injury has been inflicted upon any man, woman or child, I stand ready to make the fullest amends. _Make good, brother Sturtevant!_ The Man and the Land Certain good friends of mine were shocked, a few months ago, when they learned that I was one of those monsters who believe in the private ownership of land. Some of them deplored my ignorance, and urged me to go straightway and read “Progress and Poverty.” Well, I had read Henry George’s book soon after its publication, and had once had the precious advantage of serving a term in Congress with the great Tom Johnson; yet I never had been able to see the distinction, _in principle_, between the private ownership of a cow and the private ownership of a cow-lot. Some men are just that stupid, and when Ephraim gets “sot” on a thing of that kind, even Louis Post, of _The Public_, has to let him alone. Certain other friends made the point on me that I did not understand Count Tolstoy. That is possible. In his various ramblings into various speculative matters, Tolstoy, like our own Emerson, gets lost, sometimes, in mazes of his own making; and he uses language which may delight professional commentators, but which is sorely vexatious to an average citizen who really wants to know what the philosophers are driving at. Tolstoy is careful to avoid _History_. The flood of light which might be thrown upon the land question by the records of the human race is shut out altogether. And _this_ is the weak spot in the armor of every champion who enters the list against the Private Ownership of Land. If History makes any one thing plain, it is that a Civilization was never able to develop itself on any other basis than that of Private Ownership. Like other champions of his theory, Tolstoy forgets the elemental traits of Human Nature. He forgets how _unequal_ we are by Nature; how we differ, in character, capacity, taste and purpose; how few there are who will labor for the “good of all,” and how universal is the rule that each man labors, first of all, for _himself_. He forgets that every beast of the field has its prototype in some members of the human family; he forgets that the _man_-tiger is now more numerous than the four-footed sort; that the _man_-fox is more cunning than his wild brother; that the _man_-wolf hunts with every human herd; that the _man_-sloth is marked by nature with her own indelible brand; that some men are born timid as the deer are; that some are born without fear as the lion is; that the human hog grunts and gorges, and makes himself a nauseating nuisance, on the streets, in hotels, in the Pullman cars—in fact everywhere, but most of all where people have to eat and sleep. This is the fundamental error which doctrinaires are prone to make. _They forget what Human Nature actually is, always has been, and perhaps, always will be._