[Footnote 1: An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey in the
island, Saghalien.]
* * * * *
Fedya, the steward's brother-in-law, told Ivanov that wild-duck were
feeding on the other side of the wood. He loaded his gun with slugs.
Suddenly a wolf appeared. He fired and smashed both the wolf's hips.
The wolf was mad with pain and did not see him. "What can I do for
you, dear?" He thought and thought, and then went home and called
Peter.... Peter took a stick, and with an awful grimace, began to beat
the wolf.... He beat and beat and beat until it died.... He broke into
a sweat and went away, without saying a single word.
* * * * *
_Vera_: "I do not respect you, because you married so strangely,
because nothing came of you.... That is why I have secrets from you."
* * * * *
It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions
cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should
seek a simple solution.
* * * * *
There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.
* * * * *
I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I were born a second time
and were asked: "Do you want to marry?" I should answer: "No." "Do you
want to have money?" "No...."
* * * * *
Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in novels, not ordinary persons. She
loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual.
Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations
to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance
impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors.
She wrote with a pencil in the margins: "Wonderful!" "Beautiful!" or
"Serve him right!"
* * * * *
Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth.
* * * * *
_Post coitum_: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health.
* * * * *
He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought:
"Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in
scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons."
* * * * *
She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows.
* * * * *
The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels
that he has overheard everything....
* * * * *
What a lot of idiots there are among ladies. People get so used to it
that they do not notice it.
* * * * *
They often go to the theatre and read serious magazines--and yet are
spiteful and immoral.
* * * * *
_Nat_: "I never have fits of hysterics. I am not a pampered
darling."[1]
[Footnote 1: This and the following few passages are from the rough
draft of Chekhov's play _Three Sisters_.]
* * * * *
_Nat_: (continually to her sisters): "O, how ugly you have grown. O,
how old you do look!"
* * * * *
To live one must have something to hang on to.... In the provinces
only the body works, not the spirit.
* * * * *
You won't become a saint through other people's sins.
* * * * *
_Koulyguin_: "I am a jolly fellow, I infect every one with my mood."
* * * * *
_Koul_. Gives lessons at rich houses.
* * * * *
_Koul_. In Act IV without mustaches.
* * * * *