* * * * *

A man who can not do anything, does not know how to act, how to enter a room, how to ask for anything.

* * * * *

Utiujny

* * * * *

A man who always insists:  “I haven’t got syphilis.  I’m an honest man.  My wife is an honest woman.”

* * * * *

X. all his life spoke and wrote about the vices of servants and about the way to manage and control them, and he died deserted by every one except his valet and his cook.

* * * * *

A little girl with rapture about her aunt:  “She is very beautiful, as beautiful as our dog!”

* * * * *

Marie Ivanovna Kolstovkin.

* * * * *

In a love letter:  “Stamp enclosed for a reply.”

* * * * *

The best men leave the villages for the towns, and therefore the villages decline and will continue to decline.

* * * * *

Pavel was a cook for forty years; he loathed the things which he cooked and he never ate.

* * * * *

He ceased to love a woman; the sensation of not being in love; a peaceful state of mind; long peaceful thoughts.

* * * * *

Conservative people do so little harm because they are timid and have no confidence in themselves; harm is done not by conservative but by malicious people.

* * * * *

One of two things:  either sit in the carriage or get out of it.

* * * * *

For a play:  an old woman of radical views dresses like a girl, smokes, cannot exist without company, sympathetic.

* * * * *

In a Pullman car—­these are the dregs of society.

* * * * *

On the lady’s bosom was the portrait of a fat German.

* * * * *

A man who at all elections all his life long always voted against the Left.

* * * * *

They undressed the corpse, but had no time to take the gloves off; a corpse in gloves.

* * * * *

A farmer at dinner boasts:  “Life in the country is cheap—­one has one’s own chickens, one’s own pigs—­life is cheap.”

* * * * *

A customs official, from want of love for his work, searches the passengers, looking for documents of a suspicious political nature, and makes even the gendarmes indignant.

* * * * *

A real male (mouzhtchina) consists of man (mouzh) and title (tchin).

* * * * *