108 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE -XIII 



requesting me to ask the Empress to write a book in the 

 shape of a Report on Women s Work in Russia, careful 

 instructions being given as to how and at what length she 

 must write it. 



A letter also came from one of these quasi-officials at 

 Chicago, not requesting, but instructing, me to ask the 

 Emperor to report to his bureau on the condition of the 

 empire; funnily enough, this &quot;instruction&quot; was evidently 

 one of several, and they had been ground out so care 

 lessly that the one which I was instructed to deliver to the 

 Emperor was addressed to the &quot;King of Holland.&quot; It 

 was thus made clear that this important personage at 

 Chicago, who usurped the functions of the Secretary of 

 State, had not even taken the trouble to find out that there 

 was no such person as a &quot;King of Holland,&quot; the person 

 age whom he vaguely had in mind being, no doubt, the 

 Queen Regent of the Netherlands. 



Soon there followed another of these quasi-instructions, 

 showing another type of crankishness. Beginning with 

 the weighty statement that the school-boys of every coun 

 try are the future men of that country,&quot; it went on with 

 a declaration that it had been decided to hold a convention 

 of the school-children of the world at Chicago, in con 

 nection with the Exposition, and ended by instructing me 

 to invite to its deliberations the school-children of Russia. 

 Of course I took especial care not to communicate any of 

 these things to any Russian : to have done so would have 

 made the Exposition, instead of the admiration, the laugh 

 ing-stock of the empire; but I wrote a letter to the as 

 sistant secretary of state, Mr. Quincy, who presently put 

 an end to these vagaries. 



One is greatly struck in Russia by the number of able 

 and gifted men and women scattered through Russian 

 society, and at the remarkable originality of some of 

 them. The causes of this originality I touch in my chap 

 ter on Tolstoi. 



It was a duty as well as a pleasure for me to keep up 

 my acquaintance with persons worth knowing ; and, while 



