* * * * *
I visit a friend, find him at supper; there are many guests. It
is very gay; I am glad to chatter with the women and drink wine.
A wonderfully pleasant mood. Suddenly up gets N. with an air of
importance, as though he were a public prosecutor, and makes a speech
in my honor. "The magician of words ... ideals ... in our time when
ideals grow dim ... you are sowing wisdom, undying things...." I feel
as if I had had a cover over me and that now the cover had been taken
off and some one was aiming a pistol at me.
* * * * *
After the speech--a murmur of conversation, then silence. The gayety
has gone. "You must speak now," says my neighbor. But what can I say?
I would gladly throw the bottle at him. And I go to bed with some
sediment in my soul. "Look what a fool sits among you!"
* * * * *
The maid, when she makes the bed, always puts the slippers under the
bed close to the wall. The fat master, unable to bear it any longer,
gives the maid notice. It turns out that the doctor told her to put
the slippers as far as possible under the bed so as to cure the man of
his obesity.
* * * * *
The club blackballed a respectable man because all of the members were
out of humor; they ruined his prospects.
* * * * *
A large factory. The young employer plays the superior to all and is
rude to the employees who have University degrees. Only the gardener,
a German, has the courage to be offended: "How dare you, gold bag?"
* * * * *
A tiny little schoolboy with the name of Trachtenbauer.
* * * * *
Whenever he reads in the newspaper about the death of a great man, he
wears mourning.
* * * * *
In the theatre. A gentleman asks a lady to take her hat off, as it
is in his way. Grumbling, disagreeableness, entreaties. At last a
confession: "Madam, I am the author of the play." She answered: "I
don't care."
* * * * *
In order to act wisely it is not enough to be wise (Dostoevsky).
* * * * *
A. and B. have a bet. A. wins the wager, by eating twelve cutlets; B.
does not pay even for the cutlets.
* * * * *
It is terrible to dine every day with a person who stammers and says
stupid things.
* * * * *
Glancing at a plump, appetizing woman: "It is not a woman, it is a
full moon."
* * * * *
From her face one would imagine that under her stays she has got
gills.
* * * * *
For a farce: Kapiton Ivanovitch Boil.
* * * * *
An income-tax inspector and an excise official, in order to justify
their occupations to themselves, say spontaneously: "It is an
interesting profession, there is a lot of work, it is a live
occupation."
* * * * *
At twenty she loved Z., at twenty-four she married N. not because she
loved him, but because she thought him a good, wise, ideal man. The
couple lived happily; every one envies them, and indeed their life
passes smoothly and placidly; she is satisfied, and, when people
discuss love, she says that for family life not love nor passion is
wanted, but affection. But once the music played suddenly, and, inside
her heart, everything broke up like ice in spring: she remembered Z.
and her love for him, and she thought with despair that her life was
ruined, spoilt for ever, and that she was unhappy. Then it happened
to her with the New Year greetings; when people wished her "New
Happiness," she indeed longed for new happiness.
* * * * *
Z. goes to a doctor, who examines him and finds that he is suffering
from heart disease. Z. abruptly changes his way of life, takes
medicine, can only talk about his disease; the whole town knows that
he has heart disease and all the doctors, whom he regularly consults,
say that he has got heart disease. He does not marry, gives up amateur
theatricals, does not drink, and when he walks does so slowly and
hardly breathes. Eleven years later he has to go to Moscow and there
he consults a specialist. The latter finds that his heart is perfectly
sound. Z. is overjoyed, but he can no longer return to a normal life,
for he has got accustomed to going to bed early and to walking slowly,
and he is bored if he cannot speak of his disease. The only result is
that he gets to hate doctors--that is all.
* * * * *
A woman is fascinated not by art, but by the noise made by those who
have to do with art.
* * * * *
N., a dramatic critic, has a mistress X., an actress. Her benefit
night. The play is rotten, the acting poor, but N. has to praise.
He writes briefly: "The play and the leading actress had an enormous
success. Particulars to-morrow." As he wrote the last two words, he
gave a sigh of relief. Next day he goes to X.; she opens the door,
allows him to kiss and embrace her, and in a cutting tone says:
"Particulars to-morrow."
* * * * *
In Kislovodsk or some other watering-place Z. picked up a girl of
twenty-two; she was poor, straightforward, he took pity on her and,
in addition to her fee, he left twenty-five roubles on the chest of
drawers; he left her room with the feeling of a man who has done
a good deed. The next time he visited her, he noticed an expensive
ash-tray and a man's fur cap, bought out of his twenty-five
roubles--the girl again starving, her cheeks hollow.
* * * * *
N. mortgages his estate with the Bank of the Nobility at 4 per cent,
and then lends the money on mortgage at 12 per cent.
* * * * *
Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same
toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women.
* * * * *
N., when a group is being photographed, always stands in the front
row; on addresses he always signs the first; at anniversaries he is
always the first to speak. Always wonders: "O soup! O pastries!"
* * * * *
Z. got tired of having visitors, and he hired a French woman to live
in his house as if she were his mistress. This shocked the ladies and
he no longer had visitors.
* * * * *
Z. is a torch-bearer at funerals. He is an idealist. "In the
undertaker's shop."
* * * * *
N. and Z. are intimate friends, but when they meet in society, they at
once make fun of one another--out of shyness.
* * * * *
Complaint: "My son Stepan was delicate, and I therefore sent him to
school in the Crimea, but there he was caned with a vine-branch, and
that gave him philoxera in the behind and now the doctors can not cure
him."
* * * * *
Mitya and Katya were told that their papa blasted rocks in the quarry.
They wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so they took a pound of
powder from their father's room, put it in a bottle, inserted a wick,
and placed it under their grandfather's chair, when he was dozing
after dinner; but soldiers marched by with the band playing--and this
was the only thing that prevented them from carrying out their plan.
* * * * *
Sleep is a marvelous mystery of Nature which renews all the powers of
man, bodily and spiritual. (Bishop Porphyrius Usgensky, "The Book of
My Life.")
* * * * *
A woman imagines that she has a peculiar, exceptional constitution,
whose ailments are different from other people's and which cannot
stand ordinary medicine. She thinks that her son is unlike other
people's sons, that he has to be brought up differently. She believes
in principles, but she thinks that they apply to every one but
herself, because she lives in exceptional circumstances. The son grows
up, and she tries to find an exceptional wife for him. Those around
her suffer. The son turns out a scoundrel.
* * * * *
Poor long-suffering art!
* * * * *
A man whose madness takes the form of an idea that he is a ghost:
walks at night.
* * * * *
A sentimental man, like Lavrov, has moments of pleasant emotion and
makes the request: "Write a letter to my auntie in Briansk; she is a
darling...."
* * * * *
There is a bad smell in the barn: ten years ago haymakers slept the
night in it and ever since it smells.
* * * * *
An officer at a doctor's. The money on a plate. The doctor can see in
the looking-glass that the patient takes twenty-five roubles from the
plate and pays him with it.
* * * * *
Russia is a nobody's country!
* * * * *
Z. who is always saying banal things: "With the agility of a bear,"
"on one's favorite corn."
* * * * *
A savings bank: the clerk, a very nice man, looks down on the bank,
considers it useless--and yet goes on working there.
* * * * *
A radical lady, who crosses herself at night, is secretly full of
prejudice and superstition, hears that in order to be happy one should
boil a black cat by night. She steals a cat and tries to boil it.
* * * * *
A publisher's twenty-fifth anniversary. Tears, a speech: "I offer ten
roubles to the literary fund, the interest to be paid to the poorest
writer, but on condition that a special committee is appointed to work
out the rules according to which the distribution shall be made."
* * * * *
He wore a blouse and despised those who wore frock coats. A stew of
trousers.
* * * * *
The ice cream is made of milk in which, as it were, the patients
bathed.
* * * * *
It was a grand forest of timber, but a Government Conservator was
appointed, and in two years time there was no more timber; the
caterpillar pest.
* * * * *