o away for rest.
The countess did not. Decidedly, the Countess Sophia Tolstoy is one of
those truly feminine heroines who are cast into shadow by a brilliant
light close to them, but a heroine none the less in more ways than need
be mentioned. Her self-denial and courage gave to the world "War and
Peace" and "Anna Karenin;" and she declares that were it to do over
again she would not hesitate a moment. The public owes the count's wife
a great debt of gratitude, and not of reproaches, for bravely opposing
his fatal desire to live in every detail the life of a peasant laborer.
Can any one blessed with the faintest particle of imagination fail to
perceive how great a task it has been to withstand him thus for his own
good; to rear nine healthy, handsome, well-bred children out of the much
larger family which they have had; to bear the entire responsibility of
the household and the business?

She remarked, one day, that there was no crying need for the Russian
nobility to follow her husband's teachings and give away all their goods
in order to be on a level with the peasants. Plenty of them would soon
attain that blissful state of poverty in the natural course of things,
since they were not only growing poorer every year, but the distribution
of inheritances among the numerous children was completing the work, and
very many would be reduced to laboring with their hands for a living.
This is perfectly true. There is no law of primogeniture in Russia. The
one established by Peter the Great having produced divers and grievous
evils, besides being out of harmony with the Russian character, it was
withdrawn. All the male children share equally in the father's estate as
in title. The female children receive by law only an extremely small
portion of the inheritance, but their dowry is not limited.

Among the count's most ardent followers is one of his daughters. She
does everything for herself, according to his teachings, in a manner
which American girls, in even moderately well-to-do families, would
never dream of. She works for the peasants in various ways, and carries
out her father's ideas in other matters as far as possible. Her Spartan
(or Tolstoyan) treatment of herself may be of value in character-
building, as mortification of the flesh is supposed to be in
general. Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles
render her sacrifices unavailing. For example: one of the peasant women
having been taken ill,