r which he had received from a Russian woman, a
stranger to him. The writer said: "While acknowledging the justice of
your views, I must remark that marriage is a fate which is not possible
to every woman. What, then, in your opinion, should a woman who has
missed that fate do?"

I was interested in his reply, because six months earlier he had advised
me to marry. I inquired what answer he intended to send,--that is, if
he meant to reply at all. He said that he considered the letter of
sufficient importance to merit an answer, and that he should tell her
that "every woman who had not married, whatever the reason, ought to
impose upon herself the hardest cross which she could devise, and bear
it."

"And so punish herself for the fault of others, perhaps?" I asked. "No.
If your correspondent is a woman of sufficient spirit to impose that
cross, she will also have sufficient spirit to retort that very few of
us choose our own crosses; and that women's crosses imposed by Fate,
Providence, or whatever one pleases to call it, are generally heavier,
more cruel, than any which they could imagine for themselves in the
maddest ecstasy of pain-worship. Are the Shaker women, of whom you
approve, also to invent crosses? And how about the Shaker men? What is
their duty in the matter of invoking suffering?"

He made no reply, except that "non-marriage was the ideal state," and
then relapsed into silence, as was his habit when he did not intend to
relinquish his idea. Nevertheless I am convinced he is always open to
the influence--quite unconsciously, of course--of argument from any
quarter. His changes of belief prove it.

These remarks anent the Shakers seemed to indicate that another change
was imminent; and as the history of his progress through the links of
his chain of reasoning was a subject of the greatest interest to me, I
asked his wife for it. It cannot be called anything but a linked
progress, since the germs--nay, the nearly full-fledged idea--of his
present moral and religious attitude can be found in almost all of his
writings from the very beginning.

When the count married, he had attained to that familiar stage in the
spiritual life where men have forgotten, or outgrown, or thoroughly
neglected for a long time the religious instruction inculcated upon them
in their childhood. There is no doubt that the count had been well
grounded in religious tenets and ceremonies; the Russian church is
particular on this point