The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-12-27
ToLsToY AND JANE ADDAMs

In Twenty Years at Hull House" | (published November 16) Jane Addams tells of a meeting between herself and Tolstoy, whom she had travelled all the
 way to Yasnaya Polyana to see, in the
 hope that he might help her In her strug- gles to solve the problem of how to deal
 with the question of poverty. MT Maude, friend of Tolstoy and also of Miss | Addams, took pains to dwell at consid-
 orable length in his introduction of Miss Addams to the celebrated Russian, upon her wonderful work at Hull House. Miss | Addams describes the succeeding incl dents in the following manner:
 "Tolstoy. standing by. clad in his peas- ant garb, listened gravely, but, glanc- ing distrustfully at the sleeves of my
 travelling gown which unfortunately at
 that season were monstrous in size, he
 took hold of an edge and putting out
 one sleeve to an interminable length,
 said quite simply that there was
 enough stuff on one arm to make frock for little girl and asked me if
 I did not find such a dress a barrier to the people, I was too disconcerted
 to say that monstrous as my sleeves
 were they did not compare in size with
 those of the working girls in Chicago and that nothing would more effectively
 separate me from the people than a
 cotton blouse following the simple lines
 of the human form; even If l had
 wished to initiate him and dress as
 peasant 1t would have been hard to
 choose which peasant among the 36 na-
 tionalities we had recently counted in our
 ward. Fortunately the countess came to
 my rescue with a recital of her former
 attempts to clothe hypothetical little girls
 in yards of material cut from a train
 and other superhuous parts of her best
 gown until she had been driven to a firm
 stand which she advised me to take at
 once. But neither Countess Tolstoy nor
 out of my predicament later, when
 was asked who fed me, and how did I
 obtain shelter% Upon my reply that a farm 100 miles from Chicago supplied
 me with the necessities of life, I fairly anticipated the next scathing question:
 So you are an absentee landlord? Do you think you will help the people more by adding yourself to the crowded city than you would by tilling your own soilT This new sense of discomfort over a failure to till my own soil was in- creased when Tolstoy's second daughter appeared at the o'clock tea table set under the trees, coming straight from the harvest field where she had been work ing with a group of peasants since 5 o'clock in the morning, not pretending to work, but really taking the place of a peasant woman who had hurt her foot. | She was plainly much exhausted but neither expected nor received sympathy from the members of a. family who were quite accustomed to see each other carry out their convictions in spite of dis comfort and fatigue. The martyrdom of discomfort, however. was obviously much easier to bear than that to which, even to the eye of the casual visitor Count Tolstoy daily subjected himself, for his study In the basement of the conven- tional dwelling, with its short shelf of battered books and its scythe and spade leaning against the wall, had many times lent itself to that ridicule which is the most difficult form of martyrdom."