CHAPTER VI. 



WITH COUNT TOLSTO'f. 



ON Friday, July 4, our road from Tula led through 

 Yasnia Polyana, the ancestral estate of Count Leo 

 N. Tolstoi, the novelist. We had ridden out to Tula 

 that morning, and striking the great Moscow-Kharkoff 

 highway, turned our horses' heads toward the south. 

 For some distance our road cut a swath through a 

 magnificent forest. A stone pillar, surmounted by the 

 imperial arms of Russia, told us that it was govern- 

 ment property. We turned to the left, and a short 

 distance from the road we came to a pair of circular 

 pillars at the end of an avenue. It was the entrance 

 to the Tolstoi' estate. Both pillars and avenue seemed 

 sadly neglected, to one accustomed to the neatness of 

 England and America. The former were in decay, and 

 the latter was overgrown with weeds and vagabond 

 tree shoots. We seemed to be entering the domain of 

 fallen grandeur rather than the abode of Russia's 

 greatest and best known novelist. 



On the plastered wall of a tumble-down little lodge, 

 near the pillars, was chalked, in Russian, "Come to 

 the house." We rode up the avenue to the house. 

 It is a white two-story structure of stone and wood — a 

 roomy, though unpretentious abode. The only striking 

 feature about it was a very broad veranda, with rude 

 carvings of horses and birds on the railings. It was 



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