d, if one considers the
unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the subscribers and the
great moral responsibility which he could not but feel toward them. So
that before undertaking anything he had himself to be fully convinced of
the necessity of giving aid.

The day after his arrival, we saddled a couple of horses and rode out.
We rode as we had ridden together twenty years before, when we went out
coursing with our greyhounds; that is, across country, over the fields.

It was all the same to me which way we rode, as I believed that all the
neighboring villages were equally distressed, and my father, for the
sake of old memories, wanted to revisit Spasskoye Lyutovinovo, which
was only six miles from me, and where he had not been since Turgenieff's
death. On the way there I remember he told me all about Turgenieff's
mother, who was famous through all the neighborhood for her remarkable
intelligence, energy, and craziness. I do not know that he ever saw
her himself, or whether he was telling me only the reports that he had
heard.

As we rode across the Turgenieff's park, he recalled in passing how of
old he and Ivan Sergeyevitch had disputed which park was best, Spasskoye
or Yasnaya Polyana. I asked him:

"And now which do you think?"

"Yasnaya Polyana IS the best, though this is very fine, very fine
indeed."

In the village we visited the head-man's and two or three other
cottages, and came away disappointed. There was no famine.

The peasants, who had been endowed at the emancipation with a full share
of good land, and had enriched themselves since by wage-earnings, were
hardly in want at all. It is true that some of the yards were badly
stocked; but there was none of that acute degree of want which amounts
to famine and which strikes the eye at once.

I even remember my father reproaching me a little for having sounded the
alarm when there was no sufficient cause for it, and for a little while
I felt rather ashamed and awkward before him.

Of course when he talked to the peasants he asked each of them if he
remembered Turgenieff and eagerly picked up anything they had to say
about him. Some of the old men remembered him and spoke of him with
great affection.

MY FATHER'S ILLNESS IN THE CRIMEA

IN the autumn of 1901 my father was attacked by persistent feverishness,
and the doctors advised him to spend the winter in the Crimea. Countess
Panina kindly lent him her Villa Gaspra, near Koreiz, and