"It encourages individuality," he added. "Do you not find your own countrymen more individual than those of any other nation?" he added, addressing Jimmie directly for the first time.
"I think I do," said Jimmie, carefully weighing out his words as if on invisible scales. Jimmie is largely imbued with that absurd fear of a man who has written books, which is to me so inexplicable.
"Your country appeals to Russians, strongly," pursued the count, evidently bent upon drawing Jimmie out.
"I have often wondered why," said Jimmie. "It couldn't have been the wheat?"
"No, not entirely the wheat, although the news of your generosity spread like wildfire through all classes of society, and served to open the hearts of the peasants toward America as they are opened toward no other country in the world. The word 'Amerikanski' is an open sesame all through Russia. Have you noticed it?"
"Often," said Jimmie. "And often wondered at it. But that wheat was a small enterprise to gain a nation's gratitude. It is the more surprising to us because it was not a national gift, but the result of the generosity and large-mindedness of a handful of men, who pushed it through so quietly and unostentatiously that millions of people in America to this day do not know that it was ever done, but over here we have not met a single Russian who has not spoken of it immediately."
"The Russians are a grateful people," observed Mrs. Jimmie, "but it seems a little strange to me to discover such ardent gratitude among the nobility for assistance which reached people hundreds of miles away from them, and in whose welfare they could have only a general interest, prompted by humanity."
"Ah! but madame, Russians are more keenly alive to the problem of our serfs than any other. Many of our wealthy people are doing all that they can to assist them, and, when a crisis like the famine comes, it is heart-breaking not to be able to relieve their suffering. Consequently, the sending of that wheat touched every heart."
"Then, too, we are not divided,—the North against the South, as you were on your negro question," said the little countess. "The peasant problem stretches from one end of Russia to the other."
"We are a diffuse people," I said. "Perhaps that is the result of our mixed blood and the individuality that you spoke of, but your books are so widely read in America that I believe people in the North are quite as well informed and quite as much interested in the problem of the Russian serf as in our own negro problem."