At yet greater length he spoke on this subject, and the more he spoke the more he quickened within me the resolve to do as he wished it to be done.
Founding of Farm School promised.
And there, under The Poverty Tree, it was where I gave Tolstoy the solemn promise that upon my return home the earliest task I would enter upon would be the establishment of an agricultural school for Jewish lads, and other lads. And the existence of the National Farm School, near Doylestown in this state, is testimony that I kept my promise. I had gone to Russia to see the Czar, and I saw a greater man instead. I had gone with a plan for colonizing Russian Jews in Russia, and I returned with a plan for teaching agriculture chiefly to Russian Jewish lads in the United States. Verily, “man proposes and God disposes.” And the hundreds of young men who have received their agricultural training at the National Farm School, and the hundreds of others, young and old, who, directly and indirectly, have been encouraged by that school to forsake the congested cities and to take up the farmer’s life, owe their escape from the miseries of the Ghetto, and their enjoyment of health and happiness, to the promise asked of me by that noblest of all farmers, count Tolstoy.
Promise kept under difficulties.
The establishment of the school was not an easy task, nor is its maintenance easy even now, notwithstanding the excellent record it has made. The bulk of our people have not yet acquired that profound grasp of the seriousness of our problem, and of its only possible solution, that Tolstoy had, sixteen years ago. Therefore is the support of that school still so meagre. Therefore has it still less than a hundred students in attendance when it easily could have a thousand, and more, if it had the means. And, therefore, are our Ghettoes more crowded than ever, and a greater drain than ever on our charities. That despite indifference and even hostility the school has persevered is due, to a very large extent, to the determination to keep sacred a promise solemnly given to one of the best of men.
Parting from Tolstoy.
It was late that night when I took leave of the count and of some of the members of his family. Before departing, it was agreed that I enter at once upon my journey to the Jewish agricultural colonies in the interior, that I might see them at work during the height of their harvesting, and a peasant and his wagon were engaged to take me on that trip. The count bade me a hearty God-speed, and repeatedly urged me to make my report personally to him, and I promised that I would avail myself a second time of his proffered hospitality, if my way should lead me back again to Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Never heard from him again.
Unfortunately, after my inspection of the Jewish agricultural colonies, which fully confirmed the favorable reports the count had received of them, my investigations led me to the Southern and Polish provinces, and consumed so much of my limited time that a return North was impossible. And so I never got to see the count again. And I never heard from him. Neither my report, which I sent to him in writing, nor my other communications to him, written in Russia and outside of it, have brought from him a reply. Never a line from him even in answer to the information sent him that the National Farm School, which he had so strongly urged, had been founded. Never an acknowledgment from him of the early annual reports of the School that were sent him to show the headway it was making.
Probable reason of silence.
The heartiness of his reception of me, his almost affectionate farewell, his deep interest in my mission and his earnest invitation that I repeat my visit to him, preclude the thought that I was forgotten by him or became indifferent to him after my departure. There is but one explanation—an explanation strengthened by similar experiences of others in connection with him—none of my communications ever reached him. I was not wanted in Russia. I was a persona non grata to the government; my name was blacklisted, and my mail fell under the ban of the censor.
With him in spirit under Poverty Tree.
But, if my mail has never reached him, my thoughts have been with him often. Many a time have I sat with him, in spirit, under that Poverty Tree. And yet more often will I sit with him there in the future, now that that site has become Holy Ground.
Has become his grave.
Gladly do I forgive the church of Russia many an outrage or blunder she has perpetrated or permitted to be perpetrated, for the one good act she has performed—that of refusing Tolstoy sepulture in what she is pleased to call “consecrated ground.” She thus obliged him to designate as his last resting-place a spot that was one of the dearest on earth to him, a spot that was intimately associated with his life’s philosophy, a spot located within a confine wherein he ruled more mightily and more exaltedly than any Czar that ever wielded scepter in vast Russia, where he wrote those epochal books of his which are destined some day to become of the basal elements of the religion of the future.
No Czarian funeral more solemn than Tolstoy’s.
And even though no priest was nigh when the last rites over his remains were performed, there were present, besides his family, those who were more sacred in his eyes than priests or metropolitan, more honorable than even the Procurator of the Holy Synod—his dearly beloved peasants. It was these who followed him to his last resting place. It was these who sang the mortuary hymn Everlasting Memory, at his open grave. It was these, the “orphaned peasantry,” as they called themselves because of his death, who gave his burial a distinction such as no Czarian funeral procession had ever enjoyed, notwithstanding ecclesiastical pomp or military display. It was these whose labors and outlook he had sought to soften and to brighten, who delivered the briefest and most eloquent eulogy that has, perhaps, ever been spoken: “His heart has burst because of his unbounded love for humanity. The light of the world is extinguished.”
In spite of herself church has made a saint of him.
In refusing religious sepulture to the holiest man in Russia, the Greek orthodox church performed the crowning feat in her long series of stupidities. And yet, by that act she did, in despite of herself, the very thing she did not wish to see done. Like Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust who, in response to the question who he is, says: “Ich bin ein Theil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft,” so did she prove herself the power that sought the evil and yet performed the good. By her act of intolerance she gave a new saint to Russia, and perhaps the only one she has. By it she furnished a sanctuary to that country, one that may be destined to make a Mecca of Yasnaya Polyana, one that may be more piously sought in the future, and by larger numbers, than any shrine or sanctuary of her own creation. By that act she shed a halo of immortal glory around the head of him whom she sought to cover with infamy.
Has two ways of making saints.
The church has two ways of conferring saintships, a lesser and a higher one. The lesser distinction she confers upon lesser luminaries, generally upon those made famous by myth or legend for great endurance in fasting or penance, or for conquering imaginary devils, for working fancied miracles, or for displaying fiendish cruelty in persecuting and exterminating heretics. The higher distinction she confers generally at the stake or on the gallows, within prison walls or in the torture chamber, upon men of great minds or great hearts, upon lovers of truth and fearless enunciators of it, upon men who because of their love of humanity defy the power that interdicts God’s greatest gift to man: the right to think and the right to believe and speak in accordance with the canons of reason and with the dictates of conscience.
Still makes of intolerance an act of piety.
In asking me the difference between reform and orthodox Judaism in America, and between American Reform Jews and Russian Karaitic Jews, and in replying that the difference exists mainly in the synagogue, that
