Page:Rebels and reformers (1919).djvu/331

 Tolstoy suffered from the silliness of some of his followers, and once sadly said he supposed he should be known through them and their eccentricities. There is a good deal of truth in the saying that a man's admirers are sometimes his worst enemies.

Tolstoy gave up writing novels, and wrote only one more, "Resurrection," quite at the end of his life. This was written with a great moral purpose, and is a serious and terrible book. His earlier novels he now referred to as "wordy rubbish"; he hated them, as he felt they were frivolous and could only be interesting to the upper classes. He wrote, however, a great many books on life, conduct, and religion, and children's stories. They were printed very cheaply and taken round by pedlars. The peasants read and loved these books, and they seemed to penetrate right into the heart of Russia. They were written simply, and the peasants understood them. Tolstoy was very happy that he had been able to help and please the poor people.

Now, preaching as Tolstoy did against property and the extraordinarily unfair system which allows one man to have a thousand acres and another not even a foot, he could not satisfy himself until he had got rid of his own property; so difficulties arose with his family. His wife would not have felt so strongly about it, no doubt, if she had had only herself to think of; but it is difficult for a mother to believe that her children will be happier and better without money