a very stolid man who drinks tea from a copper teapot.  And here are the gloomy gates of the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow....  On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression.  Altogether the dilapidated condition of the University buildings, the gloominess of the corridors, the griminess of the walls, the lack of light, the dejected aspect of the steps, the hat-stands and the benches, take a prominent position among predisposing causes in the history of Russian pessimism....  Here is our garden...  I fancy it has grown neither better nor worse since I was a student.  I don’t like it.  It would be far more sensible if there were tall pines and fine oaks growing here instead of sickly-looking lime-trees, yellow acacias, and skimpy pollard lilacs.  The student whose state of mind is in the majority of cases created by his surroundings, ought in the place where he is studying to see facing him at every turn nothing but what is lofty, strong and elegant....  God preserve him from gaunt trees, broken windows, grey walls, and doors covered with torn American leather!

When I go to my own entrance the door is flung wide open, and I am met by my colleague, contemporary, and namesake, the porter Nikolay.  As he lets me in he clears his throat and says: 

“A frost, your Excellency!”

Or, if my great-coat is wet: 

“Rain, your Excellency!”

Then he runs on ahead of me and opens all the doors on my way.  In my study he carefully takes off my fur coat, and while doing so manages to tell me some bit of University news.  Thanks to the close intimacy existing between all the University porters and beadles, he knows everything that goes on in the four faculties, in the office, in the rector’s private room, in the library.  What does he not know?  When in an evil day a rector or dean, for instance, retires, I hear him in conversation with the young porters mention the candidates for the post, explain that such a one would not be confirmed by the minister, that another would himself refuse to accept it, then drop into fantastic details concerning mysterious papers received in the office, secret conversations alleged to have taken place between the minister and the trustee, and so on.  With the exception of these details, he almost always turns out to be right.  His estimates of the candidates, though original, are very correct, too.  If one wants to know in what year some one read his thesis, entered the service, retired, or died, then summon to your assistance the vast memory of that soldier, and he will not only tell you the year, the month and the day, but will furnish you also with the details that accompanied this or that event.  Only one who loves can remember like that.