A Moscow actress never in her life saw a turkey-hen.

* * * * *

On the lips of the old I hear either stupidity or malice.

* * * * *

“Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers.”  Pete is woken up, he says his prayers, cries, then lies down and shakes his fist at the child who made the complaint.

* * * * *

He imagined that only doctors could say whether it is male or female.

* * * * *

One became a priest, the other a Dukhobor, the third a philosopher, and in each case instinctively because no one wants really to work with bent back from morning to night.

* * * * *

A passion for the word uterine:  my uterine brother, my uterine wife, my uterine brother-in-law, etc.

* * * * *

To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with agitation:  “You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you.”  The father keeps “Switzerland,” furnished apartments.  He takes the fried fish out of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork.  The vodka smells rank.  N. went, looked about him, had dinner—­his only feeling that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such filth.  But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at the window:  his father was sitting with bent back reading a book.  He recognized himself and his own manners.

* * * * *

As stupid as a gray gelding.

* * * * *

They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.

* * * * *

N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers, actors, and authors:  “You think, you scamp,...”—­without signing his name.

* * * * *

When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in love with him.

* * * * *

A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody, a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that’s all; when he dies, every one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some one else.

* * * * *

After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over honesty.

* * * * *

He who tells lies is dirty.