TWO GREAT RUSSIANS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8106, 29 March 1906, Page 7

TWO GREAT RUSSIANS.

Miss Meakin, the authoress of the latest book on Russia, bad the opportunity, when she visited Russia, -to see some specially interesting persons. For years past there have been two men in Russia who could say and do what they pleased— Count Leo Tolstoi and Father Johann, 'or John of Kronstad. The latter is now more than eighty years old, and too frail to walk alone in the crowd that presses upon him the moment he appears in public. Soldiers walk on either Bide when he takes bis way through the streets, but they have hard work to keep the crowd from crushing their saint's life out of him. When he comes to St. Petersburg, HIS TRAIN OF FOLLOWERS stop the town traffic. The sick are brought thousands of miles that be may heal their diseases, or, if travel is forbidden, their friends arrive to beseech his prayers. "His eyes are supposed to have miraculous power. By looking into people's faces he can read, not only their thoughts but their histury, and he advises them about the future with such satisfactory results, that their faith is unbounded." But. when REPAID WITH PURSBIS OF GOLD, this aged seer only hands on the fee to the next poor man wno begs from him. "Money is nothing to Father Johann; he takes what each ohooses to give, and bands it to the first who asks." On the visit of Tolstoi, in bis house at Tula, Miss Meakin found a kindly expression on the face of the venerable novelist "which made > biR noble features more attractive j than any photograph has been able J to represent them." His last callers bad been two American ministers,! which naturally turned the conversation to Amerioan topics. The ministers had not made a good impression. They had never read hmerson, and knew very little about him; they bad not shone in the Count's examination upon Channing, Parker, orThoredu; and shocked this great writer of another oouLtiy with flucb ignorance as to writers of their own. "Tnese are the daya of telephones and superficiality," he pronounoed. "People miss the best of life. What is MORE PRECIOUS THAN TO KNOW and study the works of the truly great? Your England has never appreciated Ruskin or Carlyle as she should have done, and France has undervalued Voltaire." He dwelt on the importance of some inspiring reading at the beginning of each day, and again returned to Transatlantic errors. "The American magazines of to-day cause a terrible waste of time by tempting people to read them. With their splendid paper and superb illustrations, what utter • rubbish they are to read?" Newspapers also came under the ban, though he confessed tbat bis daughter read these to him and reported on articles worth notice. But whether in affectation or fact, Tolstoi was careful to impress his entire indifference to events of national interest. This was wartime, and his own son gone to the front. "Yet affairs of tb inert were nothing as com paredwith the question of the day—tbat is, whether Amerioan magazines are not becoming a curse to the nation "by teaching you g peope to waste their time over profitless reading."