New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1910-11-30
Official Paper of New Ulm.
Lyeff Nikolaevitch Tolstoy.

Polstoy has passed. A oorn aris-
tocrat student, author, soldier, land
lord, peasant, mystic, whose soul
roamed the infinite, but whose feet
were always on the ground-Tolstoy
above all, was lover of his fellow
man.
When student Of eighteen he atten-
ded a ball in great palace. It was
bitter cold night, Returning to his
sleigh near morning he found his
peasant coachman almost frozen. It
was with the greatest difficulty that
his life was finally saved. This dra-
matte episode was the turning in the
young counts life. "Why, thought
he, should I, young nobleman, who
have never been of any use to ANY,
one, and perhaps never will be, why
should | be permitted to pass the night
in this great house, elegantly furnished
and comfortably warmed, and to con-
sumo, in wine and delicacies, the
value of many days labor, while the
poor peasant, the representative of
the class that builds and heats houses
and provides the food and drink, is
out in the cold?n
& With the instinct of the seer, he
1 saw that it was no accidental event,
but miniature picture Of the civiliza-
ton of the day, In which one class
sOwed and reaped and another took
and enjoyed the harvest.
Tolstoy then abandoned his univer-
sity career as selfish luxury and
went to his country estate (his parents
were dead, } with the determin alton of
sdevoting his life to the welfare of the
serfs whose interests he found intrust-
ed to him.
He judged things and events at first
hand, as though no one had ever con-
gsidered them before. Moreover, he
Judged by his heart rather than his
head. "During my stay in Paris"
he says, ''the sight Of public execu-
ton revealed to me the weakness of
my superstitious belief in progress.
AS I saw the head divided from the
body and heard the sound as they fell
separately into the box, [ understood,
not with my reason, but with my whole
being, that no theory Of the wisdom,
of all established things nor of pro-
gress, could justify such an act, and
that if all the men in the world, from
the beginning, by whatever theory,
had found this thing necessary, it was
not so; it was bad thing, and there
fore [ must judge of what is right and
necessary, not by what men said and
did, but by what [ felt to be true in
my heart" !
At fifty Count Tolstoy found him
self celebrated, rich, and surrounded
by loved and loving family, and yet
so wretched that he thought seriously
of suicide.
The question, which he had SO far
buried, under superficial activities,
confronted him for an answer. The
grave spiritual crisis, which comes to
all, was upon him: 'What is the
meaning Of life?'' "What do I live
for?"
For years he struggled to find the
solution. He said: "For anyone to
live he must either close his eyes to
ininity Or find some way of relating
himself to infnity.'
"What am II" he asked. IA part
OF the infinite whole.' Here was the
answer to the problem, for faith,
which defines our relation to the whole
world, is the deepest source of wisdom.
When Illumination came to Tolstoy
be oroke with the rich and their
luxurious and useless modes of living.
He withdrew to his country seat, and
lived there the simple life of a peasant,