Tolstoy recalled aid sent from Philadelphia to famine-stricken in Russia.
The first question count Tolstoy put to me, after his long silence, was from what part of the United States I hailed. Upon my telling him that Philadelphia was my home, he expressed himself as much pleased. He recalled the two shiploads of food we sent from our port, two years earlier, for the relief of the famine-stricken of Russia, and of the distribution of which he had had personal charge, and he spoke with pleasure and appreciation of Mr. Francis B. Reeves, our fellow-townsman, who had accompanied the food-relief.
Said first aid came from Sacramento synagogue.
With even keener delight he recalled that the first aid received from the United States was from the Jewish congregation of Sacramento, California, which to him was all the more remarkable from the fact that the district stricken was, through governmental restriction, uninhabited by Jews. The expression of pleasure turned to one of sorrow when he remarked that Russia had little deserved such generous treatment at the hands of Jews,—and he lived to see the manner in which it was repaid in Kishineff and other places.
Was fond of Quakers.
Reverting to our city, he said that the name of Philadelphia had always had a pleasant sound for him, partly because of its meaning "Brotherly Love," and partly because it was founded by William Penn. He expressed a high admiration for Quakers, and asked how strong they were numerically and whether they are still as opposed to war and resistance as their founders were. Upon answering his question to the best of my ability, he asked: "Why is it that war, which is the greatest curse of mankind, has so many advocates, and peace, the greatest of all blessings, so few?" After some discussion we both agreed that it was due to that strange perversity of human nature that sees the right and approves of it, and yet often willfully chooses the wrong.
Blamed school for many of present-day wrongs.
He blamed the schools for many of the errors that obtain in society, and claimed that there was too much education of the wrong kind, and too little of the right. In discussing this statement of his, I chanced to mention that education in the lower grades was compulsory with us. To this he strongly objected. All compulsion, he said, was wrong. Man must be gotten to do right by the law of love and not by the rule of force. Upon my telling him that but for compulsory education some parents would never send their children to school, he said: "What of it? The children would probably be no less moral and no less happy than those of highest education. I have associated with the learned and the ignorant, and I have found more honor and honesty, more fear of the Lord and more true happiness, among the unlettered than among the lettered. The more of education we cram into the heads of the people the more of the fear of God is crowded out of them. The world lives by the love of God and not by the primer or the multiplication table." "What, if you had had no education?" I ventured to ask. Quickly and feelingly came the answer "The world would have been none the worse, and I would have been the happier." "What if Jesus and the other prophets had had no schooling?" I asked. To which he replied "It was not what they got out of their schools that made them the spiritual and moral powers they became, but what they got out of their hearts. God puts more education into the human heart than man has ever been able to put into the head. Some of the wisest and best people hereabouts are peasants who have never seen the inside of a school, and who do not know one letter from another." "What of Paul," I asked, "who certainly enjoyed the benefits of the Greek schools of his day?" To which he replied "The schools made of Paul a theologian, and Christianity would have been the better without the theology of Paul."
Warped by unfavorable surroundings.