They invited a famous singer to recite the Acts of the Apostles at the wedding; he recited it, but they have not paid his fee.

* * * * *

For a farce:  I have a friend by name Krivomordy (crooked face) and he’s all right.  Not crooked leg or crooked arm but crooked face:  he was married and his wife loved him.

* * * * *

N. drank milk every day, and every time he put a fly in the glass and then, with the air of a victim, asked the old butler:  “What’s that?” He could not live a single day without that.

* * * * *

She is surly and smells of a vapor bath.

* * * * *

N. learned of his wife’s adultery.  He is indignant, distressed, but hesitates and keeps silent.  He keeps silence and ends by borrowing money from Z., the lover, and continues to consider himself an honest man.

* * * * *

When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I say:  “I have had enough.”  But when I stop reading poems or novels, I say:  “No more of that, no more of that.”

* * * * *

A solicitor lends money at a high rate of interest, and justifies himself because he is leaving everything to the University of Moscow.

* * * * *

A little sexton, with radical views:  “Nowadays our fellows crawl out from all sorts of unexpected holes.”

* * * * *

The squire N. always quarrels with his neighbors who are Molokans[1]; he goes to court, abuses and curses them; but when at last they leave, he feels there is an empty place; he ages rapidly and pines away.

[Footnote 1:  Molokans are a religious sect in Russia.]

* * * * *

Mordukhanov.

* * * * *

With N. and his wife there lives the wife’s brother, a lachrymose young man who at one time steals, at another tells lies, at another attempts suicide; N. and his wife do not know what to do, they are afraid to turn him out because he might kill himself; they would like to turn him out, but they do not know how to manage it.  For forging a bill he gets into prison, and N. and his wife feel that they are to blame; they cry, grieve.  She died from grief; he too died some time later and everything was left to the brother who squandered it and got into prison again.

* * * * *

Suppose I had to marry a woman and live in her house, I would run away in two days, but a woman gets used so quickly to her husband’s house, as though she had been born there.

* * * * *

Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do you counsel?  God forbid that any one should listen to your counsels.