from view with handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another in the dark. Tolstoy says: "The 'ant brotherhood' was revealed to us, but not the chief secret: the way for all men to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarreling and being angry, and become continuously happy: this secret Nicholas said he had written on a green stick and buried by the road at the edge of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nicholas."
Writing when he was over seventy, Tolstoy says: "The ideal of ant brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though not under two armchairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has remained the same for me. As I then believed that there existed a little green stick, whereon was written the message which could destroy all evil in men and give them universal welfare, so I now believe that such truth exists, and will be revealed to men and will give them all it promises."
Tolstoy's early childhood was on the whole very happy, in spite of his far-seeing, sensitive, and rather morbid nature. At times he was certainly very miserable, but, on the other hand, he had an immense power of enjoyment, and loved games and horses and dogs and the country itself, and his affections were very strong.
One of the things that worried him as a child was his own looks; he thought himself so plain. He says
