* * * * *

N. married a German when she was seventeen.  He took her to live in Berlin.  At forty she became a widow and by that time spoke Russian badly and German badly.

* * * * *

The husband and wife loved having visitors, because, when there were no visitors they quarreled.

* * * * *

It is an absurdity!  It is an anachronism!

* * * * *

“Shut the window!  You are perspiring!  Put on an overcoat!  Put on goloshes!”

* * * * *

If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.

* * * * *

On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage—­people driving to mass.

* * * * *

For the first time in her life a man kissed her hand; it was too much for her, it turned her head.

* * * * *

What wonderful names:  the little tears of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The names of flowers.]

* * * * *

A government forest officer with shoulder straps, who has never seen a forest.

* * * * *

A gentleman owns a villa near Mentone; he bought it out of the proceeds of the sale of his estate in the Tula province.  I saw him in Kharkhov to which he had come on business; he gambled away the villa at cards and became a railway clerk; after that he died.

* * * * *

At supper he noticed a pretty woman and choked; a little later he caught sight of another pretty woman and choked again, so that he did not eat his supper—­there were a lot of pretty women.

* * * * *

A doctor, recently qualified, supervises the food in a restaurant.  “The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor.”  He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him—­and all is well.

* * * * *

He did not eat, he partook of food.

* * * * *

A man, married to an actress, during a performance of a play in which his wife was acting, sat in a box, with beaming face, and from time to time got up and bowed to the audience.

* * * * *

Dinner at Count O.D.’s.  Fat lazy footmen; tasteless cutlets; a feeling that a lot of money is being spent, that the situation is hopeless, and that it is impossible to change the course of things.

* * * * *

A district doctor:  “What other damned creature but a doctor would have to go out in such weather?”—­he is proud of it, grumbles about it to every one, and is proud to think that his work is so troublesome; he does not drink and often sends articles to medical journals that do not publish them.