* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

X.:  “Choleraic disorder in my stomach started with the cider.”

* * * * *

Of some writers each work taken separately is brilliant, but taken as a whole they are indefinite; of others each particular work represents nothing outstanding; but, for all that, taken as a whole they are distinct and brilliant.

* * * * *

N. rings at the door of an actress; he is nervous, his heart beats, at the critical moment he gets into a panic and runs away; the maid opens the door and sees nobody.  He returns, rings again—­but has not the courage to go in.  In the end the porter comes out and gives him a thrashing.

* * * * *

A gentle quiet schoolmistress secretly beats her pupils, because she believes in the good of corporal punishment.

* * * * *

N.:  “Not only the dog, but even the horses howled.”

* * * * *

N. marries.  His mother and sister see a great many faults in his wife; they are distressed, and only after four or five years realize that she is just like themselves.