circumstances, and the cry of "prohibition" may have been employed as a
satisfactory and unanswerable tradesman's excuse for not being supplied
with the goods desired.

"How had they affected him? Why, he had learned to love all the world
better. He knew that if he had a bit of bread he must share it with his
neighbor, even if he did find it hard work to support his wife and four
small children. Had such a need arisen? Yes; and he had given his
children's bread to others." (He pretended not to hear when I inquired
why he had not given his own share of the bread.) "Was he a more honest
man than before? Oh, yes, yes, indeed! He would not take a kopek from
any one unless he were justly entitled to it."

"And Count Tolstoy! A fine man, that! The Emperor had conferred upon him
the right to release prisoners from the jail,--had I noticed the big
jail, on the left hand as we drove out of town?" (I took the liberty to
doubt this legend, in strict privacy.) "Tula was a very bad place; there
were many prisoners. Men went to the bad there from the lack of
something to do." (This man was a philosopher, it seemed.)

So he ran on enthusiastically, twisting round in his seat, letting his
horse do as it would, and talking in that soft, gentle, charming way to
which a dozen adjectives would fail to do justice, and which appears to
be the heritage of almost every Russian, high or low. It was an
uncomfortable attitude for us, because it left us nowhere to put our
smiles, and we would not for the world have had him suspect that he
amused us.

But the gem of his discourse dropped from his lips when I asked him
what, in his opinion, would be the result if Count Tolstoy could
reconstruct the world on his plan.

"Why, naturally," he replied, "if all men were equal, I should not be
driving you, for example. I should have my own horse and cow and
property, and I should do no work!"

I must say that, on reflection, I was not surprised that he should have
reached this rather astonishing conclusion. I have no doubt that all of
his kind--and it is not a stupid kind, by any means--think the same.
I tried to tell him about America, where we were all equals in theory (I
omitted "theory"), and yet where some of us still "drive other people,"
figuratively speaking. But he only laughed and shook his head, and said
he did not believe that all men were equal in such a land any more than
they were in Russia. That was the sort of wall against which I w