COUNT TOLSTOI'S WILL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 28, 1 February 1913, Page 17

COUNT TOLSTOI'S WILL.

Vi"KITTEN IN PENCIL ON THE STUMP OK A TREE IN 1910. MISERY OF HIS YOUTH. The Paris "Journal dcs Debats" published on Saturday. December 11. the late Couut Tolstoi's will, which was written in 1!>10 on the stump of a tree a few miles from Yasnaia Toliana, leaving his entire literary property, published aud unpublished, to his daughter Alexandra. The document is preceded by a long extract from Tolstoi's diary, dated ISilo, setting forth what would be his will if no other were made subsequent to that entry. The first clause says: "Bury mc where I die. If in town, then in the cheapest cemetery, in the cheapest coffin like a pauper. No flowers, no wreaths, uo speeches, without priest or liturgy if possible, but, if this is distasteful to those burying mc, bury mc according to custom with liturgy, but as cheaply and simply as possible." The second clause runs: "Do not publish my death in the newspapers, and publish no obituary notice." The third clause gives instructions as to the classification of his papers by his wife and daughters, aud orders his diaries to be destroyed when what is worth preserving has been extracted. This particularly applies to the journals kept when he was a bachelor, wheu he led a "miserable, wicked life." But. he adds: "After all. let my diaries remain, as they are. It will be seen from in spite of the platitude and misery of my youth, <iod did not abandon mc. and that, ns 1 grew older. I learned, however little, to understand and to love Him.

The final clause reads: "One more point, and it is the most important. I ask all, whether my kindred or no. not to speak well of me—they will do it. I know, for they have done it during my lifetime, and it was very badly done —and. if there are people who interest themselves in my writings, let. them go to passages where I know Divine force has spoken through mc, and let them derive profit for their life. "I have had moments when I felt that I was a conductor through which passed tho Divine will. 1 have often been so impure. so given up to personal passions, that the light of that truth has been obscured by my own darkness. In spite of all, I have sometimes been the intermediary of that truth, and these were the happiest moments of my life. May Hod will that, passing through mc. these verities have not been polluted, aad may men thereiu find their pasture. -'In spite of all my meanness and impunity, it is only in this sense that my writings have any importance, for in regard to them only ill can be said of mc, and nothing whatever of good. That is all."— Ben ter.