a quantity of lithographed copies of five or ten forbidden books
(Tolstoy's and others) to a disciple of Tolstoy in one of the northern
governments. In the village of this disciple, some young women students
in the higher or university courses for women, and followers of Tolstoy,
were living for the summer in peasant fashion, and working in the
fields, "_to the scornful pity of the peasants_" (I italicize this
phrase as remarkable on the lips of an adept.) These young women, having
heard of the dispatch by post of the books, and being in the town,
thought to do the count's disciple a favor by asking if they had
arrived. Had they refrained, nothing would have happened and the books
would have been delivered without a question. As it was, attention was
attracted to the parcel by the inquiry of these girls of eccentric
behavior. The fifty or sixty copies were confiscated; the girls'
passports were taken from them. The disciple appealed to a relative in
high official position in their behalf. The girls were informed, in
consequence, that they might hire themselves out to work for this
disciple of gentle birth as much as they liked; but they were forbidden
to work for or among the peasants. The adventure was not ended when this
story was told. Whether the students were satisfied with the permission
to work I do not know. Probably not; their fellow-disciple would not
have scorned them as the peasants did, and contradiction, that spice of
life to enthusiastic worshipers of impracticable ideas, would have been
lacking. In my opinion, the authorities committed an error in judgment.
They should have shown more faith in the peasants, the toil, and the
girls' unhardened frames. All three elements combined could have been
trusted to effect a permanent cure of those disciples by the end of the
harvest, had they been gently encouraged not only to work with the
peasants but to prove that they were capable of toiling and enduring in
precisely the same manner and measure.

Still the authorities very naturally looked upon the action of the girls
as a case of _idti v narod_ (going to the people), in the sense
understood by the revolutionary propagandists. Their prohibition was
based on this ground.

In some way we got upon the subject of English things and ways. The
count's eyes flashed.

"The English are the most brutal nation on earth!" he exclaimed. "Along
with the Zulus, that is to say. Both go naked: the Zulus all day long,
the En