Page:The American Review of Reviews - Volume 24.djvu/51

 Russian houses, arranged for the purpose of maintaining equable heat, all the rooms communicate with one another, and to reach Tolstoy's room you must first pass through a number of others. It is here you catch the first glimpse of the Tolstoy family as they are, their relations to one another, and their relations to life. It is in no way remarkable, and in many ways a real practical help to Tolstoy, that his family is not unanimous in support of his views. The division is admirably expressed in the economy of their Moscow home. The two rooms which you must pass through in order to reach the hermit's cell are in every way arranged as is usual among the class to which Tolstoy belongs. During my first and most of my later visits, they were thronged with people engaged chiefly in amusing themselves, and there was an air of tasteful luxury and worldly, if harmless, gayety over all. It was a fraction of the great world of which Tolstoy forms no part, but with which,

for the sake of domestic union and practical efficiency, he has made a working compromise. The mechanism of the transformation which brings before you the scene of Tolstoy's real life is very simple. You descend a couple of steps, open a little door to the right, and the second scene appears. It is a little room, lighted by a single candle by night and by three small windows by day, simply furnished, but without any affectation of simplicity. Two tables covered with books and papers, a bookcase, a sofa, and a few chairs were all the furniture which it contained, but in the dim candle-light there was a general air of overcrowding and disorder. It was plainly the room of a man who held comfort in contempt, but who looked on contempt for comfort as too natural a thing for ostentatious expression. But in all there was an air of contrast to the rest of the house, highly symbolical to those who have studied both Tolstoy's life and teachings. To such an observer