Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/39

Rh doctor remonstrated with him on the violence of his temper as likely to prove injurious to his health, Tolstoi, like Peter the Great before him, would declare that it was his nature. “I want to control myself but cannot,” he would always say. His industry and economy were promptly rewarded by prosperity. Count Tolstoi’s estate was one of the comparatively few in Russia of the same size which more than paid its expenses. Yasnaya Polyana was especially famous for its excellent cream, which sold in the Moscow market at 60 kopecks (1s. $2 1/2$d.) per pound. No description, we are told, can give any idea of the cheerful and attractive life at Yasnaya Polyana during the first sixteen years of Tolstoi’s happy married life (1862–1878). There was no subject, from cricket and football to the most abstruse branches of philosophy, in which Tolstoi did not take a lively interest, and though his acquaintances were few, they numbered among them some of the most enlightened and interesting men in Russia, including, , and the mathematician, A. Fet. As his sons grew up they became his closest companions. At his call they would joyfully come running out to join him in his long rambles (he rarely went a shorter distance than twelve miles at a stretch), or in a course of Swedish gymnastics, or compete with him at hurdle racing, or go a-hunting or shooting. In the winter the father and sons would be skating or sledging together, or bombarding snow fortifications of their own construction. Indeed Tolstoi asked for nothing better than to pass his days in the bosom of his family. He hated to be away from his wife and