TOLSTOI AND HIS SISTER

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 27 June 1912, Page 3

TOLSTOI AND HIS SISTER

TWO GREAT CHARACTERS

Countess Maria Nikolaievna Tolstoi, sister ai Leo Tolstoi, has died at a great age, in the convent where she had been a nun for many years.' The brother and sister were united in their passion for sacrifice, and, although the one was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church, and the other found peace in a cloister, they understood each other thoroughly. Both desired perfection. The paths towards it that they- chose were different, but they realised that they were going towards the same goal. They did not dispute about religious matters, but were content to be united in renunciation. She joined other women in philanthropic work, but rich ladies in smart dresses and diamonds who talked about their "dear poor/ seemed to her ridiculous, and she quickly saw that she was only playing a part in a fashionable amusement. She then attempted more serious efforts to help the wretched, and it was doubtless due to her acquaintance with misery and poverty that she decided to abandon her rank and the advantages money and position had given her. Becoming' a nun she was for the rest of her life known as Sister Maria. She followed the rigorous rule which obtains in Russian convents contentedly. Occasionally she was permitted to visit her brother at Yasnaya Poly ana, and his family always looked forward to the visits of the old mm m the black habit and cylindrical head-dress covered with a black veil and unrelieved by any touch of white.' tier love for her brother was deep and tender. When he made the great renunciation, the splendid prelude to his death, and left his home and wife and children to be alone with his Maker he stopped to say farewell to the sister who years berore had renounced all that seems to make life beautiful. It was perhaps, she alone who understood the magnificence of his end.