“You can get very good clothing here,” the count remarked, as a man passed us, his arm passed through the armholes of a pile of new vests.  “These mittens,” exhibiting the coarse, white-fingered mittens which he wore, piles of the same and stockings to match being beside us, “are very stout and warm.  They cost only thirty kopeks.  And the other day, I bought a capital shirt here, for a man, at fifty kopeks” (about twenty-five cents).

I magnanimously refrained from applying to that shirt the argument which had been used against my suggestion in regard to giving bread.  This market goes on every day in the year, hot or cold, rain, sun, or shine.  It is a model of neatness.  Roofs improvised from scraps of canvas protect the delicate (?) eatables during inclement weather.  In very severe weather the throng is smaller, the first to beat a retreat being, apparently, the Tatars in their odd kaftans “cut goring,” as old women say, who deal in old clothes, lambskins, and “beggars’ lace.”  Otherwise, it is always the same.

Our publisher’s shop proved to be closed, in accordance with the law, which permits trading—­in buildings—­only between twelve and three o’clock on Sundays.  On our way home the count expressed his regret at the rapid decline of the republican idea in America, and the surprising growth of the baneful “aristocratic”—­not to say snobbish—­sense.  His deductions were drawn from articles in various recent periodical publications, and from the general tone of the American works which had come under his observation.  I have heard a good deal from other Russians about the snobbishness of Americans; but they generally speak of it with aversion, not, as did Count Tolstoy, with regret at a splendid opportunity missed by a whole nation.

I am sorry to say that we never got our expedition to the Old Believers’ Church, or the others that were planned.  Two days later, the count was taken with an attack of liver complaint, dyspepsia,—­caused, I am sure, by too much pedestrian exercise on a vegetable diet, which does not agree with him,—­and a bad cold.  We attended Christmas Eve service in the magnificent new Cathedral of the Saviour, and left Moscow before the count was able to go out-of-doors again, though not without seeing him once more.

I am aware that it has become customary of late to call Count Tolstoy “crazy,” or “not quite right in the head,” etc.  The inevitable conclusion of any one who talks much with him is that he is nothing of the sort; but simply a man with a hobby, or an idea.  His idea happens to be one which, granting that it ought to be adopted by everybody, is still one which is very difficult of adoption by anybody,—­peculiarly difficult in his own case.  And it is an uncomfortable theory of self-denial which very few people like to have preached to them in any form.  Add to this that his philosophical expositions of his theory lack the clearness which generally—­not always—­results from a course of strict preparatory training, and we have more than sufficient foundation for the reports of his mental aberration.  On personal acquaintance he proves to be a remarkably earnest, thoroughly convinced, and winning man, although he does not deliberately do or say anything to attract one.  His very earnestness is provocative of argument.*