The Stationmaster by Alexander Pushkin Summary

The story opens with a general statement of the plight of the stationmaster c. 1816 - 1830; the stationmaster of the time organizes stagecoach traffic and lives with his family in the same structure used as an office. Chronic shortages of horses and coaches, as well as difficulty scheduling traffic and passage, are always blamed on the stationmaster though in fact he has little control over them. The stationmaster must at all times defer to rank of privilege, such as military and political dignitaries, rather than rank of precedence—such that booking passage early is no guarantee of timely travel. The mention of a stationmaster's requisite deference foreshadows later events. The narrator, nearly entirely effaced and probably a government courier, meets one such stationmaster, Simeon Vyrin, in 1816. Vyrin's home features a pictorial presentation of the prodigal...