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Biography are so evidently sincere as to place his motives above suspicion, so that there is absolutely no getting at him. And yet opinions so eccentric were bound to mislead the unwary. What then was to be done? Fortunately, the Minister of Education, an enlightened liberal, could assure his colleague that he had carefully examined Count Tolstoi’s methods, and convinced himself that they were worthy rather of praise than of censure, and although he, the Minister, could not say that he agreed with all the Count’s views, he felt bound to thank and was determined to support him. Nevertheless the school soon died a natural death. Pupils were at first attracted by its novelty, but decamped the moment they felt they had learnt enough, and the attempt to found fourteen establishments of the same sort in other places failed for want of public support, whereupon Tolstoi abandoned the scheme altogether, and buried himself in the steppes inhabited by the nomadic Bashkirs, in order to “breathe fresh air, drink kumiss, and live the healthy, natural life of the brute beasts.” To this residence among the Bashkirs we are indebted for that piercingly vivid story: “How much land does a man want?” which will be found in my former volume of selections, entitled “Tales from Tolstoi.”

Tolstoi presently exchanged the rough hospitality of the nomadic Bashkirs for the comfort of a home of his own. On September 23rd, 1862, he married Sophia Behr, the second daughter of a Moscow physician. The bride was eighteen, the groom four-and-thirty, and at first the lady was not only indifferent to her