WITH COUNT TOLSTOI. 109 



nious, if less violent, process. In both cases the re- 

 sults are the same: both minister and footpad eat 

 food that they never produced and which, conse- 

 quently, cannot possibly be theirs by right. Such is 

 the Count's creed. 



I found Tolstoi a vegetarian, and convinced that the 

 ideal physical life is that of the Brahmins of India. 

 He believed in reducing one's wants to a minimum, 

 and in producing, so far as possible, with one's own 

 hands the wherewithal both to feed and clothe the 

 body. A state of society in which the condition of 

 one would never be such as to excite envy in another 

 is the secret of true social happiness. In Russia, the 

 pilgrims who roam the country over, depending for 

 their support from day to day on the alms of the 

 people, approach this ideal, and Tolstoi' would, so I 

 inferred from his remarks, become a pilgrim himself 

 were it not for the restraints of familv ties and con- 

 siderations. 



When he took me into his little koumiss establish- 

 ment to give me a drink of the beverage, he said 

 with enthusiasm, that with an acre of grass land and a 

 couple of milch mares, a man would possess ample 

 property for his support. The mares would live off 

 the grass and the man could milk them and live off 

 koumiss. 



Temperance finds in the great novelist an enthusiastic 

 supporter. He neither drinks intoxicating beverages 

 nor smokes, and he includes in the term many other 

 indulgences that the ordinary advocates of temperance 

 consider apart from their creed. 



In his creed romantic love is also intemperance. 



