illustrations and such moral tendencies as Tolstoy alone was capable of imparting. The form of these tales, the language and style, were so simple and perfect that it was impossible to add or to omit a single word; they were comprehensible and pleasing to young and old alike.
To the realisation of this splendid project, Tolstoy’s friend, V. G. Tchertkoff, gave a great deal of moral and material assistance, and the business side of the plan was carried out with great success by T. D. Sitin, at that time a small Moscow publisher of popular literature, and now the head of the big publishing firm of T. D. Sitin and Co. The success of the Posrednik is due in great part to his energy, business knowledge, and sincere devotion to the cause. The author of this book took also a modest part in the initiation of the business. To give an idea how successful our enterprise proved to be, I here quote a few figures of our editions. Each of Tolstoy’s booklets was seldom printed in less than 24,000 copies, and yearly we had five of such editions. The number of our publications began to grow so fast that we soon had to count copies by the million. Towards the end of the fourth year we saw that the approximate number of copies sold was 12,000,000, which meant 3,000,000 annually.
