CORSETS AND CRINOLINES : leaving his home at last, and explain why he did not do so before. The time, it seems to me, is not ripe for disclosures of this nature, which corsets and crinolines closely concern the living. corsets and crinolines a strong rein of restraint his mental distress permeates the touching letter of farewell which he wrote some sixteen years before his death. He, however, shrank from acting upon it, being corsets and crinolines to satisfy himself that it was a right step. This letter has already appeared in foreign publications,* but it is quoted here because * And in Birukov's short Life of Tolstoy, 1911. of the light which it throws on the character and disposition of the writer, the workings of his mind being of greater moment to us than those impulsive actions by which he was too often corsets and crinolines "I have suffered long, corsets and crinolines Sophie, from the discord between my life
CORSETS AND CRINOLINES : and my beliefs. "I cannot constrain you to alter your life or your accustomed ways. Neither have I had the strength to leave you ere this, for I thought my absence might deprive the little ones, corsets and crinolines so young, of whatever influence I may have over them, and above all that I should grieve you. But I can no longer live as I have lived these corsets and crinolines sixteen corsets and crinolines sometimes corsets and crinolines with you and irritating you, sometimes myself giving way to the influences and seductions to which I am accustomed and which surround me. I have now resolved to do what I have long desired: to go away . . . Even as corsets and crinolines Hindoos, at the age of sixty, betake themselves to the jungle; even as every aged and religious-minded man desires to consecrate the last years of his life to God and not to idle talk, to making jokes,
CORSETS AND CRINOLINES : to gossiping, to lawn-tennis; so I, having reached the age of seventy, long with all my soul for calm and solitude, and if not perfect harmony, at least a cessation from this corsets and crinolines discord between my whole life and my conscience. "If I had gone away openly there would have been entreaties, discussions: I should have wavered, and perhaps failed to act on my decision, whereas it must be so. I pray of you to forgive me if my action grieves you. And do you, Sophie, in particular let me go, neither seeking me out, nor bearing corsets and crinolines ill-will, nor blaming me . . . the fact that I have left you corsets and crinolines corsets and crinolines mean that I have cause of complaint against you . . . corsets and crinolines know you were not able, you were incapable of thinking and seeing as I do,
CORSETS AND CRINOLINES : and therefore you could corsets and crinolines change your life and make sacrifices to that corsets and crinolines you did not accept. Besides, I do not blame you; on the contrary, I remember with love and gratitude the thirty-five long years of our life in common, and especially the first half of the time when, with the corsets and crinolines and devotion of your maternal nature, you bravely corsets and crinolines what you regarded as your mission. You have given corsets and crinolines of maternal love and made some heavy sacrifices . . . but during the latter part of our life together, during the last fifteen years, our ways have parted. I cannot think myself the guilty one; I know that if I have changed it is not owing to you, or to the world, but because I could not do otherwise; nor can I judge you for not having followed me, and I thank you for what
CORSETS AND CRINOLINES : you have given me and will ever remember it with affection. "Adieu, my dear Sophie, I love you." The personal isolation he craved was corsets and crinolines to be his; but the isolation of spirit essential to leadership, whether of thought or action, grew year by corsets and crinolines so that in his own corsets and crinolines he was veritably "in it but not of it." At times his loneliness weighed upon him, as when he wrote: "You would find it difficult to imagine how isolated I am, to what an extent my true self is despised by those who surround me." But he must, none the corsets and crinolines have realised, as all prophets and seers have done, that solitariness of soul and corsets and crinolines from the petty complexities of social life are necessary to the mystic whose constant endeavour is to simplify and to winnow, the transient from the eternal.
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