date from the years following upon Tolstoy's pedagogic activity. Long
intervals, however, elapsed in most cases between the original synopsis
and the final touches. Thus "Father Serge," of which he sketched the
outline to Mr. Chertkov in 1890, was so often put aside to make way for
purely ethical writings that not till 1898 does the entry occur in his
diary, "To-day, quite unexpectedly, I finished Serge." A year previously
a dramatic incident had come to his knowledge, which he elaborated
in the play entitled "The Man who was dead." It ran on the lines
familiarised by Enoch Arden and similar stories, of a wife deserted
by her husband and supported in his absence by a benefactor, whom
she subsequently marries. In this instance the supposed dead man was
suddenly resuscitated as the result of his own admissions in his
cups, the wife and her second husband being consequently arrested and
condemned to a term of imprisonment. Tolstoy seriously attacked the
subject during the summer of 1900, and having brought it within a
measurable distance of completion in a shorter time than was usual with
him, submitted it to the judgment of a circle of friends. The drama made
a deep impression on the privileged few who read it, and some mention of
it appeared in the newspapers.

Shortly afterwards a young man came to see Tolstoy in private. He begged
him to refrain from publishing "The Man who was dead," as it was the
history of his mother's life, and would distress her gravely, besides
possibly occasioning further police intervention. Tolstoy promptly
consented, and the play remained, as it now appears, in an unfinished
condition. He had already felt doubtful whether "it was a thing God
would approve," Art for Art's sake having in his eyes no right to
existence. For this reason a didactic tendency is increasingly evident
in these later stories. "After the Ball" gives a painful picture of
Russian military cruelty; "The Forged Coupon" traces the cancerous