Special incident wins for me family's special welcome.
My first impression that I was classed with the other afflictions of the count's universal popularity soon wore off, however, by reason of a letter to the family which I brought with me from a distinguished professor. This gentleman had, a short time before, been dismissed from the university of St. Petersburg because he had published an essay on _The Ethics of the Talmud_, in which he had endeavored to show the lofty moral teachings of the Jews. I had made his acquaintance while in St. Petersburg, and before leaving that city he called on me, and asked me whether I would not take a letter from him, of an entirely uncompromising nature, to Tolstoy, inasmuch, as at that particular time, a letter mailed to the count did not, for easily accountable reasons, always reach him. I readily consented, and that little service, the professor having been a great favorite of the count, made me a welcome guest also to the family.
Approves of stand taken to gain admission.
Supper over, the count invited my companion and myself to join him on a walk and to tell him of what service he could be to me. I told him of the mission that brought me to Russia and of the difficulties that were placed in the way of my admission. He approved of the stand I had taken, but asked me to blame the governments for it, mine as well as his, and not the Russians, who are a kindly people.
If United States would take bolder stand Russia would yield.
He entered at length upon an exposition showing that if the United States would refuse to countenance discriminations between her citizens on account of religious belief, Russia would be obliged to yield. I told him of the audience which Mr. White and myself had had with M. Witte, and that the latter had said that, the Czar being sick, nothing could be done without his consent, that I should state my request in the form of a petition, written in English and Russian, and that he would present it to the Czar with his approval upon the latter's return, and that I had complied with the advice given. The count had little faith that my petition would ever reach the eyes of the Czar--and it never did, for the Czar never returned alive. And he had little faith in all official promises. The men in power at that time he believed to be either fanatics or cowards. The former sought to secure for themselves a soft berth in heaven, the latter sought it on earth. These were afraid to speak out their honest thought and to deal an honest blow for right and justice. They were afraid of losing caste or position or of being condemned to penal servitude, as if better persons than they had not suffered martyrdom before, or were not now paying in Siberia the price for exercising their right to liberty of thought and speech.