and forests, bonfires over which the younger members of the family
jumped in peasant fashion, and other amusements.

In consequence of vegetarian indiscretions and of trifling with his
health in other ways during the exceptionally hot weather then
prevailing, the count fell ill. When he got about a little he delighted
to talk of death. He said he felt that he was not going to live long,
and was glad of it. He asked what we thought of death and the other
world, declaring that the future life must be far better than this,
though in what it consisted he could not feel any certainty. Naturally
he did not agree with our view, that for the lucky ones this world
provides a very fair idea of heaven, because his ideal was not happiness
for all, but misery for all. He will be forced to revise this ideal if
he ever really comes to believe in heaven.

During this illness I persuaded him to read "Looking Backward," which I
had received as I was leaving Moscow. When I presented it to him, he
promised to examine it "some time;" but when I give books I like to hear
the opinion of the recipient in detail, and I had had experience when I
gave him "Robert Elsmere." Especially in this case was I anxious to
discuss the work.

At first he was very favorably impressed, and said that he would
translate the book into Russian. He believed that this was the true way:
that people should have, literally, all things in common, and so on. I
replied that matters would never arrive at the state described unless
this planet were visited by another deluge, and neither Noah nor any
other animal endowed with the present human attributes saved to continue
this selfish species. I declared that nothing short of a new planet,
Utopia, and a newly created, selected, and combined race of Utopian
angels, would ever get as far as the personages in that book, not to
speak of remaining in equilibrium on that dizzy point when it should
have been once attained. He disagreed with me, and an argument royal
ensued. In the course of it he said that his only objection lay in the
degree of luxury in which the characters of the new perfection lived.

"What harm is there in comfort and luxury to any extent," I asked,
"provided that all enjoy it?"

"Luxury is all wrong," he answered severely. "You perceive the sinful
luxury in which I live," waving his hand toward the excessively plain
furniture, and animadverting with special bitterness on the silver forks
and spoons. "I