the work, and very many would be reduced to laboring with their hands for a living.  This is perfectly true.  There is no law of primogeniture in Russia.  The one established by Peter the Great having produced divers and grievous evils, besides being out of harmony with the Russian character, it was withdrawn.  All the male children share equally in the father’s estate as in title.  The female children receive by law only an extremely small portion of the inheritance, but their dowry is not limited.

Among the count’s most ardent followers is one of his daughters.  She does everything for herself, according to his teachings, in a manner which American girls, in even moderately well-to-do families, would never dream of.  She works for the peasants in various ways, and carries out her father’s ideas in other matters as far as possible.  Her Spartan (or Tolstoyan) treatment of herself may be of value in character-building, as mortification of the flesh is supposed to be in general.  Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles render her sacrifices unavailing.  For example:  one of the peasant women having been taken ill,—­there was a good deal of sickness in the village,—­she went to the hayfield to do the woman’s work and prevent the forfeit of fifteen or twenty cents, the price of the day’s labor.  We strolled out to find her.  The thermometer must have stood at 100 degrees F., and although the dry inland heat can be better borne than the same amount of damp heat, it was far from being comfortable weather even for indolent persons.  We found her under a tree, resting and drinking cold tea, while she awaited the return, from some errand of their devising, of the peasant women who had been at work with her.  She looked wretchedly ill, and we tried to prevail on her to go back to the house with us.  But the count (who was not well enough to work) happened along, and as he said nothing she decided to stay and to resume labor at once, since the women seemed to have been detained.

As we beat a retreat homeward under that burning sun, we discovered the nature of the peasant women’s urgent business.  They were engaged in stripping the count’s bushes of their fruit and devouring it by the handful.  We could not persuade him to interfere.  “They want it, or they would not take it,” he said.  It was none of our business, to be sure, but those strong, muscular women offered such a contrast, in physique and conduct, to the fair, delicate young girl whom we had just left that we felt indignant enough to attack them ourselves, if it would have done any good.  The next day his daughter was more seriously ill than the peasant woman whose place she had taken.  I should not have felt unhappy to learn that those women had been uncomfortably ill in consequence of their greediness.