ollect his strength for the rest.

When my turn came, he said as nearly as I can remember:

"You are still young and strong and tossed by storms of passion. You
have not therefore yet been able to think over the chief questions of
life. But this stage will pass. I am sure of it. When the time comes,
believe me, you will find the truth in the teachings of the Gospel. I
am dying peacefully simply because I have come to know that teaching and
believe in it. May God grant you this knowledge soon! Good-by."

I kissed his hand and left the room quietly. When I got to the front
door, I rushed to a lonely stone tower, and there sobbed my heart out
in the darkness like a child. Looking round at last, I saw that some one
else was sitting on the staircase near me, also crying.

So I said farewell to my father years before his death, and the memory
of it is dear to me, for I know that if I had seen him before his death
at Astapova he would have said just the same to me.

To return to the question of death, I will say that so far from
being afraid of it, in his last days he often desired it; he was
more interested in it than afraid of it. This "greatest of mysteries"
interested him to such a degree that his interest came near to love. How
eagerly he listened to accounts of the death of his friends, Turgenieff,
Gay, Leskof, [23] Zhemtchuzhnikof [24]; and others! He inquired after
the smallest matters; no detail, however trifling in appearance, was
without its interest and importance to him.

His "Circle of Reading," November 7, the day he died, is devoted
entirely to thoughts on death.

"Life is a dream, death is an awakening," he wrote, while in expectation
of that awakening.

Apropos of the "Circle of Reading," I cannot refrain from relating a
characteristic incident which I was told by one of my sisters.

When my father had made up his mind to compile that collection of the
sayings of the wise, to which he gave the name of "Circle of Reading,"
he told one of his friends about it.

A few days afterward this friend came to see him again, and at once told
him that he and his wife had been thinking over his scheme for the new
book and had come to the conclusion that he ought to call it "For Every
Day," instead of "Circle of Reading."

To this my father replied that he preferred the title "Circle of
Reading" because the word "circle" suggested the idea of continuous
reading, which was what he meant to express by the title.