WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 99 



always brighter than ours, brighter than the children 

 of the rich and noble, up to a certain age. My daughter 

 proved that last winter, and it is a fact well known to all 

 of us. But after ten or twelve years they begin to get 

 dull and fall behind. It's the hard life and the drudgery 

 of toiling in the fields." 



We talked of Africa and its people, the Count hav- 

 ing heard of my adventures there the year before. He 

 listened with intense interest as I told him that among 

 the uncivilized Africans, as well as the moujiks of Rus- 

 sia, the children were brighter than the grown people. 



I intended to send the Count a copy of " Looking 

 Backward " that I had in Moscow. He had already 

 read it. He didn't know whether the government per- 

 mitted it to circulate in Russia, but he had received a 

 copy through a friend. The story was very well told, 

 he said, but that was all he could say for it. 



" To be of value, the book should have shown how 

 the results which are portrayed were to be arrived at. 

 Without that ' Looking Backward ' was nothing but a 

 fairy tale. Then, men should live a life as happy and 

 perfect as that which Mr. Bellamy describes, of their 

 own free will and spontaneous goodness, and not re- 

 quire government regulation for all their actions." 



Of the governments of the present day Tolstoi thinks 

 the United States government a long way ahead. It 

 is almost a mistake, he said, to call it a " government " 

 at all in the general acceptation of the term. Certainly, 

 it was not to be thought of as a " republic " in the 

 sense that France is a republic. The French govern- 

 ment is a " republican form of government " : the peo- 

 ple of the United States have a " natural govern- 



