WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 93 



six o'clock in the evening, and on the portico sat the 

 Countess and several young ladies. The Countess was 

 doing the honors behind the samovar, and the party 

 were regaling themselves with tea and strawberries. 

 The author sent in his card. Our horses were taken 

 to the stables, and in five minutes we were of the 

 interesting party about the samovar. Beside the 

 Countess were the eldest daughter, the Countess's 

 sister, two nieces from St. Petersburg, and two or three 

 others. 



" The Count has been mowing hay this after- 

 noon," said the Countess, " and has not yet come in. 

 I have sent him your card. He will be here in a 

 minute." 



Every person at the table could speak English, some 

 of the young ladies so fluently that it was difficult to 

 believe they had not been born and brought up in an 

 English-speaking community. 



Presently there appeared on the steps of the portico 

 a thin, sun-browned man of medium height, clad in a 

 coarse linen suit. His bushy eyebrows thatched a pair 

 of kindly yet shrewd blue eyes, and his gray beard and 

 long gray hair looked like a peasant's. A cheap home- 

 made cap, of the same material as his suit, adorned the 

 head to which the world is indebted for " War and 

 Peace," " Anna Karenina," and other masterpieces of 

 the Russian realistic school. Rude boots, as ungainly 

 as the wooden shoes of Germany, attested mutely to 

 the eminent novelist's skill — or lack of it — as a cobbler. 

 Both cap and boots were the Count's own handiwork. 

 The linen trousers were loose and the shirt looser. 

 The latter was worn, moujik fashion, outside the 



