----'s
persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as this
careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father
answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they
were answers to.[25]
[25] The curious may be disposed to trace to some such
"corrections beforehand" the remarkable discrepancy of style and
matter which distinguishes some of Tolstoy's later works, published
after his death by Mr. Tchertkof and his literary executors.
Besides the desire for death that my father displayed, in the
last years of his life he cherished another dream, which he made no
secret of his hope of realizing, and that was the desire to suffer
for his convictions. The first impulse in this direction was given
him by the persecution on the part of the authorities to which,
during his lifetime, many of his friends and fellow-thinkers were
subjected.
When he heard of any one being put in jail or deported for
disseminating his writings, he was so disturbed about it that one
was really sorry for him. I remember my arrival at Yasnaya
some days after Gusef's arrest.[26] I stayed two days with
my father, and heard of nothing but Gusef. As if there were
nobody in the world but Gusef! I must confess that, sorry
as I was for Gusef, who was shut up at the time in the local
prison at Krapivna, I harbored a most wicked feeling of resentment
at my father's paying so little attention to me and the rest of
those about him and being so absorbed in the thought of
Gusef.
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