wooer, but took no pains to conceal the fact. It seems to have been a point of honour with the Behr family that the three daughters should be married in order of seniority, and they took it quite amiss when Tolstoi, passing over the eldest daughter, set his heart upon the second. The gentleman’s final declaration, which was ultimately successful, is minutely described in “Anna Karenina,” where Kitty Shcherbatskaya is Miss Behr, while Tolstoi has described himself to the life in the character of Levin. This union proved to be of the happiest, and was blessed with nine children, five boys and four girls, the youngest of whom was born in 1891. With his marriage the most joyous period of Tolstoi’s life begins. Writing to a friend on October 9th, 1862, he says: “I have been married a fortnight, and I am a happy, a new, an altogether new man. My wife regularly looks after the cash and the acounts, and I have the bees, the sheep, a new garden, and the vines on my hands. Everything goes on pretty well, though of course it is not ideally perfect. My wife is no doll. She is of real help to me.” His happiness is so great that it strikes him as being unnatural, but he consoles himself with the reflection that love becomes purer and stronger beneath the threats of despair! On another occasion, however, he admits, without reserve, that he is perfectly happy in his married life. He has discovered that Fanny is not only a loving wife but an excellent mother, and a helper even in his literary work. The advent of children of his own gave him an opportunity of thoroughly applying his pedagogic theories to the great problem of their education.
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