.NRLF 
 
A 
 
 RARY 
 
 'eRSWTT OF 
 1.1F0«N1A 
 
NOT E-B O O K 
 
 of 
 
 ANTON CHEKHOV 
 
NOTE-BOOK OF ANTON CHEKHOV 
 
 Translated by 
 
 S. S. KOTELIANSKY 
 
 and 
 
 LEONARD WOOLF 
 
 NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. mcmxxii 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. 
 
 Published November, 1921 
 Second printing April, 1922 
 
 yOAN STACK 
 
 PBIKTSD IN THB UNITSD STATES OT AMBSIOA 
 
PS 
 
 This volume consists of notes, themes, and 
 sketches for works which Anton Chekhov 
 intended to write, and are characteristic of 
 the methods of his artistic production. 
 Among his papers was found a series of 
 sheets in a special cover with the inscrip- 
 tion: "Themes, thoughts, notes, and frag- 
 ments." Madame L. O. Knipper-Chekhov, 
 Chekhov's wife, also possesses his note-book, 
 in which he entered separate themes for his 
 future work, quotations which he liked, etc. 
 If he used any material, he used to strike it 
 out in the note-book. The significance 
 which Chekhov attributed to this material 
 may be judged from the fact that he re- 
 copied most of it into a special copy book. 
 
 843 
 
ANTON CHEKHOV'S DIARY.. 
 
 1896 
 
My neighbor V. N. S. told me that his uncle 
 Fet-Shenshin, the famous poet, when driving 
 through the Mokhovaia Street, would in- 
 variably let down the window of his carriage 
 and spit at the University. He would ex- 
 pectorate and spit: Bah! His coachman 
 got so used to this that every time he drove 
 past the University, he would stop. 
 
 In January I was in Petersburg and stayed 
 with Souvorin. I often saw Potapenko. 
 Met Korolenko. I often went to the 
 Maly Theatre. As Alexander [Chekhov's 
 brother] came downstairs one day, B. V. G. 
 simultaneously came out of the editorial of- 
 fice of the Novoye Vretnya and said to me in- 
 dignantly: "Why do you set the old man 
 (i. e. Souvorin) against Burenin*?" I have 
 never spoken ill of the contributors to the 
 Novoye Vretnya in Souvorin's presence, 
 although I have the deepest disrespect for the 
 majority of them. 
 
 In February, passing through Moscow, I 
 went to see L. N. Tolstoi. He was irri- 
 
 [1] 
 
tated, made stinging remarks about the de- 
 cadents^ and for an hour and a half argued 
 with B. Tchitcherin, who, I thought, talked 
 nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Mary 
 [Tolstoi's daughters] laid out a patience; 
 they both wished, and asked me to pick a 
 card out; I picked out the ace of spades sep- 
 arately for each of them, and that annoyed 
 them. By accident there were two aces of 
 spades in the pack. Both of them are ex- 
 traordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude 
 to their father is touching. The countess 
 denounced the painter Ge all the evening. 
 She too was irritated. 
 
 May 5. The sexton Ivan Nicolayevitch 
 brought my portrait, which he has painted 
 from a photograph. In the evening V. N. S. 
 brought his friend N. He is director of the 
 Foreign Department. . . editor of a mag- 
 azine. . . and dioctor df medicine. He 
 gives the impression of being an unusually 
 stupid person and a reptile. He said: 
 "There's nothing more pernicious on earth 
 than a rascally liberal paper," and told us 
 that, apparently, the peasants whom he doc- 
 tors, having got his advice and medicine free 
 of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. 
 
 [2] 
 
speak of the peasants with exasperation and 
 loathing. 
 
 June 1 . I was at the Vagankov Cemetery 
 and saw the graves there of the victims of the 
 Khodinka. [During the coronation of 
 Nicholas II in Moscow hundreds of people 
 were crushed to death in the Khodinka 
 Fields.] I. Pavlovsky, the Paris corre- 
 spondent of the Novoye Vremya^ came with 
 me to Melikhovo. 
 
 August 4. Opening of the school in Ta- 
 lezh. The peasants of Talezh, Bershov, 
 Doubechnia and Sholkovo presented me 
 with four loaves, an icon and two silver salt- 
 cellars. The Sholkovo peasant Postnov 
 made a speech. 
 
 N. stayed with me from the 15th to the 
 18th August. He has been forbidden [by 
 the authorities] to publish anything: he 
 speaks contemptuously now of the younger 
 G., who said to the new Chief of the Central 
 Press Bureau that he was not going to sacri- 
 fice his weekly Nedelya for N.'s sake and 
 that *'We have always anticipated the wishes 
 of the Censorship." In fine weather N, 
 walks in goloshes, and carries an umbrella, so 
 as not to die of sunstroke; he is afraid to 
 [31 
 
wash in cold water, and complains of palpi- 
 tations of the heart. From me he went on to 
 L. N. Tolstoi. 
 
 1 left Taganrog on August 24. In Rostov 
 I had supper with a school-friend, L. Volken- 
 stein, the barrister, who has already a house 
 in town and a villa in Kislovodsk [in the 
 Caucasus] . I was in Nakhichevan — what a 
 change! All the streets are lit by electric 
 light. In Kislovodsk, at the funeral of Gen- 
 eral Safonov, I met A. I. Tchouprov [a fa- 
 mous economist], later I met A. N. Vessel- 
 ovsky [litterateur] in the park. On the 
 28th I went on a hunting party with Baron 
 Steingel, passed the night in Bermamut. It 
 was cold with a violent wind. 
 
 2 September in Novorissisk. Steamer 
 Alexander 11. On the 3rd I arrived at 
 Feodossia ^and stoppefd with Souvorin. I 
 saw I. K. Aivasovsky [famous painter] who 
 said to me : "You no longer come to see me, 
 an old man." In his opinion I ought to have 
 paid him a visit. On the 16th in Kharkov, 
 I was in the theatre at the performance of 
 "The Dangers of Intelligence." 17th at 
 home: wonderful weather. 
 
 Vladimir Sloviov [famous philosopher] 
 
 [4] 
 
told me that he always carried an oak-gall in 
 his trouser pocket, — in his opinion, it is a 
 radical cure for piles. 
 
 October 17. Performance of my "Sea- 
 gull" at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. It was 
 not a success. 
 
 29th. I was at a meeting of the Zemstvo 
 Council at Sezpukhovo. 
 
 On the 10th November I had a letter fr-om 
 A. F. Koni who says he liked my "Seagull" 
 very much. 
 
 November 26th. A fire broke out in our 
 house. Count S. I. Shakhovsky helped to 
 put it out. When it was over, Sh. related 
 that once, when a fire broke out in his house 
 at night, he lifted a tank of water weighing 
 4^ cwt. and poured the water on the flames. 
 
 December 4. For the performance [of 
 the '"Seagull"] on the 17th October see 
 "Theatral," No. 95, page 75. It is true 
 that I fled from the theatre, but only when 
 the play was over. In L.'s dressing-room 
 during two or three acts. During the inter- 
 vals there came to her officials of the State 
 Theatres in uniform, wearing their orders, P. 
 — with a Star; a handsome young official of 
 the Department of the State Police also came 
 
 [5] 
 
to her. If a man takes up work which is 
 alien to him, art for instance, then, since it 
 is impossible for him to become an artist, he 
 becomes an official. What a lot of people 
 thus play the parasite round science, the the- 
 atre, the painting, — ^by putting on a uni- 
 form! Likewise the man to whom life is 
 alien, who is incapable of living, nothing else 
 remains for him, but to become an official. 
 The fat actresses, who were in the dressing- 
 room, made themselves pleasant to the 
 officials — respectfully and flatteringly. (L. 
 expressed her delight that P., so young, had 
 already got the Star.) They were old, re- 
 spectable house-keepers, serf-women, whom 
 the masters honored with their presence. 
 
 December 21. Levitan suffers from dila- 
 tion of the aorta. He carries clay on his 
 dhest. He has superb studies for pictures, 
 and a passionate thirst for life. 
 
 December 31. P. I. Seryogin, the land- 
 scape painter, came. 
 
 1897. 
 From January 10 to February 3 busy with 
 the census. I am enumerator of the 16th 
 district, and have to instruct the other (fif- 
 
 [6] 
 
teen) enumerators of our Bavykin Section. 
 They all work superbly, except the priest of 
 the Starospassky parish and the Government 
 oiBcial, appointed to the Zemstvo, G., (who 
 is in charge of the census district) ; he is away 
 nearly all the time in Serpukhovo, spends 
 every evening at the Club and keeps on 
 wiring that he is not well. All the rest of 
 the Government officials of our district arc 
 also said to do nothing. 
 
 With such critics as we have, authors like 
 N. S. Lyeskov and S. V. Maximov cannot be 
 a success. 
 
 Between "there is a God'* and ''there is no 
 God" lies a whole vast tract, which the 
 really wise man crosses with great effort. A 
 Russian knows one or other of these two 
 extremes, and the middle tract between them 
 does not interest him; and therefore he usu- 
 ally knows nothing, or very little. 
 
 The ease with which Jews change their 
 religion is justified by many on the ground of 
 indifference. But this is not a justification. 
 One has to respect even one's indifference, 
 and not change it for anything, since indif- 
 ference in a decent man is also a religion. 
 
 [7] 
 
February 13. Dinner at Mme. Moros- 
 ov's. Tchouprov, Sololevsky, Blaramberg, 
 Sablin and myself were present. 
 
 February 15. Pancakes at Soldatien- 
 kov's [a Moscow publisher]. Only Golziev 
 [editor of Russian Thought] and myself 
 were present. Many fine pictures, nearly 
 all badly hung. After the pancakes we 
 drove to Levitan, from whom Soldatienkov 
 bought a picture and two studies for 1,100 
 roubles. Met Polyenov [famous painter]. 
 In the evening I was at professor Ostrou- 
 mov's; he says that Levitan "can't help 
 dying." O. himself is ill and obviously 
 frightened. 
 
 February 16. Several of us met in the ev- 
 ening in the offices of Russian Thought to 
 discuss the People's Theatre. Every bne 
 liked Shekhtel's plan. 
 
 February 19. Dinner at the "Continen- 
 tal" to commemorate the great reform [the 
 abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious 
 and incongruous. To dine, drink cham- 
 pagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches 
 about national consciousness, the conscience 
 of the people, freedom, and such things, while 
 slaves in tail-coats are running round your 
 [8] 
 
tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen 
 wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold — 
 that is lying to the Holy Ghost. 
 
 February 22. I went to Serpukhovo to 
 an amateur performance in aid of the school 
 at Novossiolki. As far as Zarizin I was ac- 
 companied by. . . a little queen in exile, — 
 an actress who imagines herself great ; unedu- 
 cated and a bit vulgar. 
 
 From March 25 till April 10 I was laid 
 up in Ostroumov's clinic. Haemorrhage. 
 Creaking, moisture in the apices of both my 
 lungs; congestion in the apex of the right. 
 On March 28 L. N. Tolstoi came to see me. 
 We spoke of immortality. I told him the 
 gist of Nossilov's story "The Theatre of the 
 Voguls," and he evidently listened with 
 great pleasure. 
 
 May 1. N. arrived. He is always 
 thanking you for tea and dinner, apologizing, 
 afraid of being late for the train; he talks a 
 great deal, keeps mentioning his wife, like 
 Gogol's Mijniev, pushes the proofs of his 
 play over to you, first one sheet then another, 
 giggles, attacks Menshikov, whom Tolstoi 
 has "swallowed" ; assures you that he would 
 shoot Stassiulevitch, if the latter were to 
 
 [9] 
 
show himself at a review, as President of the 
 Russian Republic; giggles again, wets his 
 mustaches with the soup, eats hardly any- 
 thing, and yet is quite a nice man after all. 
 
 May 4. The monks from the monastery 
 paid us a visit. Dasha Moussin-Poushkin, 
 the wife of the engineer Gliebov, who has 
 been killed hunting, was there. She sang a 
 great deal. 
 
 May 24. I was present at the examina- 
 tion of two schools in Tchirkov. [The 
 Tchirkov and Mikhailovo schools.] 
 
 July 13. Opening of the school at 
 Novossiolki which I have had built. The 
 peasants gave me an icon with an inscription. 
 The Zemstvo people were absent. 
 
 Braz [painter] does my portrait (for the 
 Tretiakov Gallery). Two sittings a day. 
 
 July 22. I received a medal for my work 
 on the census. 
 
 July 23. In Petersburg. Stopped at 
 Souvorin's, in the drawing-room. Met VI. 
 T. . . . who complained of his hysteria 
 and praised his own books. I saw P. 
 Gnyeditch and E. Karpov, who imitated 
 Leykin showing off as a Spanish grandee. 
 
 July 27. At Leykin's at Ivanovsk. 28th 
 tio] 
 
in Moscow. In the editorial offices of Rus- 
 sian Thought, bugs in the sofa. 
 
 September 4. Arrived in Paris. "Mou- 
 lin Rouge," danse du ventre, Cafe du Neon 
 with Coffins, Cafe du Ciel, etc. 
 
 September 8. In Biarritz. V. M. Sobo- 
 levsky and Mme. V. A. Morosov are here. 
 Every Russian in Biarritz complains of the 
 number of Russians here. 
 
 September 14. Bayonne. Grande course 
 landoise. Bull-fight. 
 
 September 22. From Biarritz to Nice 
 via Toulouse. 
 
 September 23. Nice. I settled into the 
 Pension Russe. Met Maxim Kovalevsky; 
 lunched at his house at Beaulieu, with N. I. 
 Yurassov and Yakobi, the artist. In Monte 
 Carlo. 
 
 October 7. Confession of a spy. 
 
 October 9. I saw B.'s mother playing 
 roulette. Unpleasant sight. 
 
 November 15. Monte Carlo. I saw 
 how the croupier stole a louis d'or. 
 1898. 
 
 April 16. In Paris. Acquaintance with 
 M. M. Antokolsky [sculptor] and negotia- 
 tions for a statue of Peter the Great. 
 
 [11] 
 
May 5. Returned home. 
 
 May 26. Sobolevsky came to Melikhovo. 
 Must put down the fact that, in Paris, in 
 spite of the rain and cold, I spent two or 
 three weeks without being bored. Arrived 
 here with M. Kovalevsky. Many interest- 
 ing acquaintances: Paul Boyer, Art Roe, 
 Bonnie, M. Dreyfus, De Roberti, Waliczew- 
 sky, Onieguin. Luncheons and dinners, at 
 I. I. Schoukin's house. Left by Nord-ex- 
 press for Petersburg, whence to Moscow. 
 At home, found wonderful weather. 
 
 An example of clerical boorishness. At a 
 
 dinner party the critic Protopopov came up to 
 
 M. Kovalevsky, clinked glasses and said : "I 
 
 drink to science, so long as it does no harm 
 
 to the people." 
 
 1901. 
 
 September 12. I was at L. Tolstoi's. 
 
 December 7. Talked to L. Tolstoi over 
 
 the telephone. 
 
 1903. 
 
 January 8. "Istorichesky Vestnik," Nov- 
 ember 1902, "The Artistic Life of Moscow 
 in the Seventies," by I. N. Zakharin. It is 
 said in that article that I sent in my "Three 
 Sisters" to the Theatrical and Literary Com- 
 mittee. It is not true. 
 
 [12] 
 
I 
 
 ANTON CHEKHOV'S NOTE-BOOKS 
 
 (1892-1904) 
 
Mankind has conceived history as a series 
 .of battles ; hitherto it has considered fighting 
 as the main thing in life. 
 
 Solomon made a great mistake when he 
 asked for wisdom.^ 
 
 1 Among Chekhov's papers the following monologue was 
 found, written in his own hand: 
 
 Solomon (alone): Oh! how dark is life! No night, 
 when I was a child, so terrified me by its darkness as 
 does my invisible existence. Lord, to David my father 
 thou gavest only the gift of harmonizing words and 
 sounds, to sing and praise thee on strings, to lament 
 sweetly, to make people weep or admire beauty; but why 
 hast thou given me a meditative, sleepless, hungry mind? 
 Like an insect born of the dust, I hide in darkness; and 
 in fear and despair, all shaking and shivering, I see and 
 hear in everything an invisible mystery. Why this morn- 
 ing? Why does the sun come out from behind the temple 
 and gild the palm tree? Why this beauty of women? 
 Where does the bird hurry, what is the meaning of its 
 flight, if it and its young and the place to which it 
 hastens will, like myself, turn to dust? It were better I 
 had never been born or were a stone, to which God has 
 given neither eyes nor thoughts. In order to tire out my 
 body by nightfall, all day yesterday, like a mere workman 
 I carried marble to the temple; but now the night has 
 come and I cannot sleep . . . I'll go and lie down. 
 Phorses told me that if one imagines a flock of sheep 
 running and fixes one's attention upon it, the mind gets 
 confused and one falls asleep. I'll do it. . . (exit). 
 
 [15] 
 
Ordinary hypocrites pretend to be doves; 
 political and literary hypocrites pretend to 
 be eagles. But don't be disconcerted by 
 their aquiline appearance. They are not 
 eagles, but rats or dogs. 
 
 Those who are more stupid and more dirty 
 than we are called the people. The admin- 
 istration classifies the population into tax- 
 payers and non-taxpayers. But neither 
 classification will do; we are all the people 
 and all the best we are doing is the people's 
 work. 
 
 If the Prince of Monaco has a roulette 
 table, surely convicts may play at cards. 
 
 Iv. (Chekhov's brother Ivan) could phil- 
 osophize about love, but he could not love. 
 
 Aliosha: "My mind, mother, is weakened 
 by illness and I am now like a child: now I 
 pray to God, now I cry, now I am happy." 
 
 Why did Hamlet trouble about ghosts 
 after death, when life itself is haunted by 
 ghosts so much more terrible? 
 
 [16] 
 
Daughter: "Felt boots are not the correct 
 thing." 
 
 Father: "Yes they are clumsy, I'll have 
 to get leather ones." The father fell ill 
 and his deportation to Siberia was post- 
 poned. 
 
 Daughter: "You are not at all ill, father. 
 Look, you have your coat and boots 
 on. . . r 
 
 Father: "I long to be exiled to Siberia. One 
 could sit somewhere by the Yenissey or Obi 
 river and fish, and on the ferry there would 
 be nice little convicts, emigrants. . . . Here 
 I hate everything: this lilac tree in front of 
 the window, these gravel paths. . . ." 
 
 A bedroom. The light of the moon shines 
 so brightly through the window that even the 
 buttons on his night shirt are visible. 
 
 A nice man would feel ashamed even be- 
 fore a dog. . . . 
 
 A certain Councillor of State, looking at 
 a beautiful landscape, said: "What a mar- 
 velous function of nature!" From the 
 note-book of an old dog: "People don't eat 
 
 [17] 
 
slops and bones which the cooks throw away. 
 Fools I" 
 
 He had nothing in his soul except recol- 
 lections of his schooldays. 
 
 The French say: "Laid comme un che- 
 nille" — as ugly as a caterpillar. 
 
 People are bachelors or old maids because 
 they rouse no interest, not even a physical 
 one. 
 
 The children growing up talked at meals 
 about religion and laughed at fasts, monks, 
 etc. The old mother at first lost her temper, 
 then, evidently getting used to it, only 
 smiled, but at last she told the children that 
 they had convinced her, that she is now of 
 their opinion. The children felt awkward 
 and could not imagine what their old mother 
 would do without her religion. 
 
 There is no national science, just as there 
 is no national multiplication table; what is 
 national is no longer science. 
 
 [18] 
 
The dog walked in the street and was 
 ashamed of its crooked legs. 
 
 The difference between man and woman: 
 a woman, as she grows old gives herself up 
 more and more to female affairs; a man, as 
 he grows old, withdraws himself more and 
 more from female affairs. 
 
 That sudden and ill-timed love-affair may- 
 be compared to this: you take boys some- 
 where for a walk; the walk is jolly and inter- 
 esting — and suddenly one of them gorges 
 himself with oil paint. 
 
 The character in the play says to every 
 one: "You've got worms." He cures his 
 daughter of the worms, and she turns yellow. 
 
 A scholar, without talent, a blockhead, 
 worked for twenty-four years and produced 
 nothing good, gave the world only scholars 
 as untalented and as narrow-minded as him- 
 self. At night he secretly bound books — 
 that was his true vocation : in that he was an 
 artist and felt the joy of it. There came to 
 
 [19] 
 
him a bookbinder, who loved learning and 
 studied secretly at night. 
 
 But perhaps the universe is suspended on 
 the tooth of some monster. 
 
 Keep to the right, you of the yellow eye ! 
 
 Do you want to eat? 
 No, on the contrary. 
 
 A pregnant woman with short arms and 
 a long neck, like a kangaroo. 
 
 How pleasant it is to respect people! 
 When I see books, I am not concerned with 
 how the authors loved or played cards ; I see 
 only their marvelous works. 
 
 To demand that the woman one loves 
 should be pure is egotistical : to look for that 
 in a woman which I have not got myself is 
 not love, but worship, since one ought to 
 love one's equals. 
 
 The so-called pure childlike joy of life is 
 animal joy. 
 
 [20] 
 
I cannot bear the crying of children, but 
 when my child cries, I don't hear. 
 
 A schoolboy treats a lady to dinner in a 
 restaurant. He has only one rouble, twenty 
 kopecks. The bill comes to four raubles 
 thirty kopecks. He has no money and be- 
 gins to cry. The proprietor boxes his ears. 
 He was talking to the lady about Abys- 
 sinia. 
 
 A man, who, to judge from his appearance, 
 loves nothing but sausages and sauerkraut. 
 
 We judge human activities by their goal; 
 that activity is great of which the goal is 
 great. 
 
 You drive on the Nevski, you look to the 
 left on the Haymarket; the clouds are the 
 color of smoke, the ball of the setting sun 
 purple — Dante's hell ! 
 
 His income is twenty-five to fifty thou- 
 sand, and yet out of poverty he shoots him- 
 self. 
 
 [21] 
 
Terrible poverty, desperate situation. 
 The mother a widow, her daughter a very 
 ugly girl. At last the mother takes courage 
 and advises the daughter to go on the streets. 
 She herself when young went on the streets 
 without her husband's knowledge in order to 
 get money for her dresses; she has some ex- 
 perience. She instructs her daughter. The 
 latter goes out, walks all night; not a single 
 man takes her; she is ugly. A couple of 
 days later, three young rascals on the boule- 
 vard take her. She brought home a note 
 which turned out to be a lottery ticket no 
 longer valid. 
 
 Two wives: one in Petersburg, the other 
 in Kertch. Constant rows, threats, tele- 
 grams. They nearly reduce him to suicide. 
 At last he finds a way: he settles them both 
 in the same house. They are perplexed, pet- 
 rified; they grow silent and quiet down. 
 
 His character is so undeveloped that one 
 can hardly believe that he has been to the 
 University. 
 
 And I dreamt that, as it were, what I con- 
 [22] 
 
sidered reality was a dream, and the dream 
 was reality. 
 
 I observed that after marriage people 
 cease to be curious. 
 
 It usually takes as much time to feel happy 
 as to wind up one's watch. 
 
 A dirty tavern near the station. And in 
 every tavern like that you will find salted 
 white sturgeon with horse radish. What a 
 lot of sturgeon must be salted in Russia ! 
 
 Z. goes on Sundays to the Sukharevka (a 
 
 market-place in Moscow) to look for books; 
 
 he finds a book, written by his father, with 
 
 the inscription : "To darling Nadya from the 
 
 author." 
 
 A Government ofBcial wears on his chest 
 the portrait of the Governor's wife; he feeds 
 a turkey on nuts and makes her a present of 
 it. 
 
 One should be mentally clear, morally 
 pure, and physically tidy. 
 
 [23] 
 
It was said of a certain lady that she had 
 a cat's factory; her lover tortured the cats by 
 treading on their tails. 
 
 An officer and his wife went to the baths 
 together, and both were bathed by the or- 
 derly, whom they evidently did not consider 
 a man. 
 
 "And now he appeared with all his deco- 
 rations." 
 
 "And what decorations has he got?" 
 "He has a bronze medal for the census of 
 1897." 
 
 A government clerk gave his son a thrash- 
 ing because he had only obtained five marks 
 in all his subjects at school. It seemed to 
 him not good enough. When he was told 
 that he was in the wrong, that five is the 
 highest mark obtainable, he thrashed his son 
 again — out of vexation with himself. 
 
 A very good man has such a face that peo- 
 ple take him for a detective; he is suspected 
 of having stolen shirt-studs. 
 
 [24] 
 
A serious phlegmatic doctor fell in love 
 with a girl who danced very well, and, to 
 please her, he started to learn a mazurka. 
 
 The hen sparrow believes that her cock 
 sparrow is not chirping but singing beauti- 
 fully. 
 
 When one is peacefully at home, life 
 seems ordinary, but as soon as one walks 
 into the street and begins to observe, to ques- 
 tion women, for instance, then life becomes 
 terrible. The neighborhood of Patriarshi 
 Prudy (a park and street in Moscow) looks 
 quiet and peaceful, but in reality life there 
 is hell. 
 
 These red-faced young and old women are 
 so healthy that steam seems to exhale from 
 them. 
 
 The estate will soon be brought under the 
 hammer; there is poverty all round; and the 
 footmen are still dressed like jesters. 
 
 There has been an increase not in the num- 
 
 [25] 
 
ber of nervous diseases and nervous patients, 
 but in the number of doctors able to study 
 those diseases. 
 
 f 
 
 The more refined the more unhappy. 
 
 j Life does not agree with philosophy : there 
 is no happiness which is not idleness and only 
 the useless is pleasurable. 
 
 The grandfather is given fish to eat, and if 
 it does not poison him and he remains alive, 
 then all the family eat it. 
 
 A correspondence. A young man dreams 
 of devoting himself to literature and con- 
 stantly writes to his father about it; at last 
 he gives up the civil service, goes to Peters- 
 burg, and devotes himself to literature — ^he 
 becomes a censor. 
 
 First class sleeping car. Passengers num- 
 bers 6, 7, 8 and 9. They discuss daughters- 
 in-law. Simple people suffer from mothers- 
 in-law, intellectuals from daughters-in-law. 
 
 "My elder son's wife is educated, arranges 
 Sunday schools and libraries, but she is tact- 
 
 [26] 
 
less, cruel, capricious, and physically revolt- 
 ing. At dinner she will suddenly go off into 
 sham hysterics because of some article in the 
 newspaper. An affected thing." Another 
 daughter-in-law: "In society she behaves 
 passably, but at home she is a dolt, smokes, 
 is miserly, and when she drinks tea, she keeps 
 the sugar between her lips and teeth and 
 speaks at the same time." 
 
 Miss Mieschankina. 
 
 In the servants' quarters Roman, a more 
 or less dissolute peasant, thinks it his duty 
 to look after the morals of the women 
 servants. 
 
 A large fat barmaid — a cross between a 
 pig and white sturgeon. 
 
 At Malo-Bronnaya (a street in Moscow). 
 A little girl who has never been in the coun- 
 try feels it and raves about it, speaks about 
 jackdaws, crows and colts, imagining parks 
 and birds on trees. 
 
 Two young officers in stays. 
 
 [27] 
 
A certain captain taught his daughter the 
 art of fortification. 
 
 New literary forms always produce new 
 forms of life and that is why they are so re- 
 volting to the conservative human mind. 
 
 A neurasthenic undergraduate comes home 
 to a lonely country-house, reads French mon- 
 ologues, and finds them stupid. 
 
 People love talking of their diseases, 
 although they are the most uninteresting 
 things in their lives. 
 
 An official, who wore the portrait of the 
 Governor's wife, lent money on interest; he 
 secretly becomes rich. The late Governor's 
 wife, whose portrait he has worn for fourteen 
 years, now lives in a suburb, a poor widow; 
 her son gets into trouble and she needs 4,000 
 roubles. She goes to the official, and he lis- 
 tens to her with a bored look and says: "I 
 can't do anything for you, my lady." 
 
 Women deprived of the company of men 
 
 [28] 
 
pine, men deprived of the company of 
 women become stupid. 
 
 A sick innkeeper said to the doctor : "If I 
 get ill, then for the love of God come with- 
 out waiting for a summons. My sister will 
 never call you in, whatever happens ; she is a 
 miser, and your fee is three roubles a visit." 
 A month or two later the doctor heard that 
 the innkeeper was seriously ill, and while he 
 was making his preparations to go and see 
 him, he received a letter from the sister say- 
 ing: "My brother is dead.'' Five days later 
 the doctor happened to go to the village and 
 was told there that the innkeeper had died 
 that morning. Disgusted he went to the 
 inn. The sister dressed in black stood in the 
 corner reading a psalm book. The doctor 
 began to upbraid her for her stinginess and 
 cruelty. The sister went on reading the 
 psalms, but between every two sentences 
 she stopped to quarrel with him — "Lots of 
 your like running about here. . . . The 
 devils brought you here." She belongs to 
 the old faith, hates passionately and swears 
 desperately. 
 
 [29] 
 
The new governor made a speech to his 
 clerks. He called the merchants together — 
 another speech. At the annual prize-giving 
 of the secondary school for girls — a speech 
 on true enlightenment. To the representa- 
 tives of the press a speech. He called the 
 Jews together: "Jews, I have summoned 
 you.'*. . . A month or two passes — he does 
 nothing. Again he calls the merchants to- 
 gether — a speech. Again the Jews: "Jews, 
 I have summoned you.". . . He has wearied 
 them all. At last he says to his Chancellor: 
 "No, the work is too much for me, I shall 
 have to resign." 
 
 A student at a village theological school 
 was learning Latin by heart. Every half- 
 hour he runs down to the maids' room and, 
 closing his eyes, feels and pinches them ; they 
 scream and giggle; he returns to his book 
 again. He calls it "refreshing oneself." 
 
 The Governor's wife invited an official, 
 who had a thin voice and was her adorer, to 
 have a cup of chocolate with her, and for a 
 week afterwards he was in bliss. He had 
 saved money and lent it but not on interest. 
 
 [30] 
 
"I can't lend you any, your son-in-law would 
 gamble it away. No, I can't." The son- 
 in-law is the husband of the daughter who 
 once sat in a box in a boa ; he lost at cards 
 and embezzled Government money. The 
 official, who was accustomed to herring and 
 vodka, and who had never before drunk choc- 
 olate, felt sick after the chocolate. The ex- 
 pression on the lady's face: "Aren't I a dar- 
 ling^"; she spent any amount of money on 
 dresses and looked forward to making a dis- 
 play of them — so she gave parties. 
 
 Going to Paris with one's wife is like 
 going to Tula ^ with one's samovar. 
 
 The young do not go in for literature, be- 
 cause the best of them work on steam en- 
 gines, in factories, in industrial undertak- 
 ings. All of them have now gone into indus- 
 try, and industry is making enormous prog- 
 ress. 
 
 Families where the woman is bourgeoise 
 easily breed adventurers, swindlers, and 
 brutes without ideals. 
 
 ^Tula is a Russian city where samovars are manu- 
 factured. 
 
 [31] 
 
A professor's opinion: not Shakespeare, 
 but the commentaries on him are the thing. 
 
 Let the coming generation attain happi- 
 ness; but they surely ought to ask them- 
 selves, for what did their ancestors live and 
 for what did they suffer. 
 
 Love, friendship, respect do not unite peo- 
 ple as much as common hatred for something. 
 
 13th December. I saw the owner of a 
 mill, the mother of a family, a rich Russian 
 woman, who has never seen a lilac bush in 
 Russia. 
 
 In a letter: "A Russian abroad, if not a 
 spy, is a fool." The neighbor goes to Flor- 
 ence to cure himself of love, but at a distance 
 his love grows stronger. 
 
 Yalta. A young man, interesting, liked 
 by a lady of forty. He is indifferent to her, 
 avoids her. She suffers and at last, out of 
 spite, gets up a scandal about him. 
 
 [32] 
 
Pete's mother even in her old age beaded 
 her eyes. 
 
 Viciousness is a bag with which man is 
 born. 
 
 B. said seriously that he is the Russian 
 Maupassant. And so did S. 
 
 A Jewish surname : Cap. 
 
 A lady looking like a fish standing on its 
 head ; her mouth like a slit, one longs to put 
 a penny in it. 
 
 Russians abroad : the men love Russia pas- 
 sionately, but the women don't like her and 
 soon forget her. 
 
 Chemist Propter. 
 
 Rosalie Ossipovna Aromat. 
 
 It is easier to ask of the poor than of the 
 rich. 
 
 And she began to engage in prostitution, 
 
 [33] 
 
got used to sleeping on the bed, while her 
 aunt, fallen into poverty, used to lie on the 
 little carpet by her side and jumped up each 
 time the bell rang; when they left, she would 
 say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace: 
 "Something for the chamber-maid." And 
 they would tip her sixpence. 
 
 Prostitutes in Monte Carlo, the whole 
 tone is prostitutional ; the palm trees, it 
 seems, are prostitutes, and the chickens are 
 prostitutes. 
 
 A big dolt, Z., a qualified nurse, of the 
 Petersburg Rozhdestvensky School, having 
 ideals, fell in love with X., a teacher, and 
 believed him to be ideal, a public spirited 
 worker after the manner of novels and stor- 
 ies of which she was so fond. Little by little 
 she found him out, a drunkard, an idler, 
 good-natured and not very clever. Dis- 
 missed, he began to live on his wife, sponged 
 on her. He was an excrescence, a kind of 
 sarcoma, who wasted her completely. She 
 was once engaged to attend some intellec- 
 tual country people, she went to them every 
 day; they felt it awkward to give her money 
 
 [34l 
 
— and, to her great vexation, gave her hus- 
 band a suit as a present. He would drink 
 tea for hours and this infuriated her. Liv- 
 ing with her husband she grew thin, ugly, 
 spiteful, stamped her foot and shouted at 
 him: "Leave me, you low fellow." She 
 hated him. She worked, and people paid 
 the money to him, for, being a Zemstvo 
 worker, she took no money, and it enraged 
 her that their friends did not understand 
 him and thought him ideal. 
 
 A young man made a million marks, lay 
 down on them, and shot himself. 
 
 "That woman.". . . "I married when I 
 was twenty; I have not drunk a glass of 
 vodka all my life, haven't smoked a single 
 cigarette." After he had run off with an- 
 other woman, people got to like him more 
 and to believe him morq, and, when he 
 walked in the street, he began to notice that 
 they had all become kinder and nicer to him 
 — ^because he had fallen. 
 
 A man and woman marry because both of 
 them don't know what to do with themselves. 
 
 [35] 
 
The power and salvation of a people lie 
 in its intellegentsia, in the intellectuals who 
 think honestly, feel, and can work. 
 
 A man without a mustache is like a 
 woman with a mustache. 
 
 A man who cannot win a woman by a kiss 
 will not win her by a blow. 
 
 For one sensible person there are a thou- 
 sand fools, and for one sensible word there 
 are a thousand stupid ones; the thousand 
 overwhelms the one, and that is why cities 
 and villages progress so slowly. The major- 
 ity, the mass, always remain stupid; it will 
 always overwhelm; the sensible man should 
 give up hope of educating and lifting it up 
 to himself; he had better call in the assist- 
 ance of material force, build railways, tele- 
 graphs, telephones — in that way he will con- 
 quer and help life forward. 
 
 Really decent people are only to be found 
 amongst men who have definite, either con- 
 servative or radical, convictions; so-called 
 
 [36] 
 
moderate men are much inclined to rewards, 
 commissions, orders, promotions. 
 
 "What did your uncle die of?" 
 "Instead of fifteen Botkin drops,^ as the 
 doctor prescribed, he took sixteen." 
 
 A young philologist, who has just left the 
 University, comes home to his native town. 
 He is elected churchwarden. He does not 
 believe in God, but goes to church regularly, 
 makes the sign of the cross when passing near 
 a church or chapel, thinking that that sort of 
 thing is necessary for the people and that the 
 salvation of Russia is bound up with it. He 
 is elected chairman of the Zemstvo board 
 and a Justice of the Peace, he wins orders 
 and medals; he does not notice that he has 
 reached the age of forty-five; then suddenly 
 he realizes that all the time he has been act- 
 ing and making a fool of himself, but it is 
 now too late to change his way of life. 
 Once in his sleep he suddenly hears like 
 the report of a gun the words: "What are 
 you doing?" — and he starts up all in a sweat. 
 
 1 A very harmless purgative. 
 
 [37] 
 
One cannot resist evil, but one can resist 
 good. 
 
 He flatters the authorities like a priest. 
 
 Instead of sheets — dirty tablecloths. 
 
 A Jewish surname: Perchik (little pep- 
 per). 
 
 A man in conversation: "And all the rest 
 of it." 
 
 A rich man, usually insolent, his conceit 
 enormous, but bears his riches like a cross. 
 If the ladies and generals did not dispense 
 charity on his account, if it were not for the 
 poor students and the beggars, he would feel 
 the anguish of loneliness. If the beggars 
 struck and agreed not to beg from him, he 
 would go to them himself. 
 
 The husband invites his friends to his 
 country-house in the Crimea; and afterwards 
 his wife, without her husband's knowledge, 
 brings them the bill and is paid for board 
 and lodging. 
 
 [38] 
 
Potapov becomes attached to the brother, 
 and this is the beginning of his falling in 
 love with the sister. Divorces his wife. 
 Afterwards the son sends him plans for a 
 rabbit-hutch. 
 
 ''I have sown clover and oats." 
 
 "No good; you had much better sow 
 lucerne." 
 
 "I have begun to keep a pig." 
 
 "No good. It does not pay. You had 
 better go in for mares." 
 
 A girl, a devoted friend, out of the best 
 of motives, went about with a subscription 
 list for X., who was not in want. 
 
 Why are the dogs of Constantinople so 
 often described"? 
 
 Disease : "He has got hydropathy." 
 
 I visit a friend, find him at supper; there 
 are many guests. It is very gay ; I am glad 
 to chatter with the women and drink wine. 
 A wonderfully pleasant mood. Suddenly 
 
 [39] 
 
up gets N. with an air of importance, as 
 though he were a public prosecutor^ and 
 makes a speech in my honor. "The magi- 
 cian of words . . . ideals ... in our time 
 when ideals grow dim . . . you are sowing 
 wisdom, undying things. ..." I feel as 
 if I had had a cover over me and that now 
 the cover had been taken off and some one 
 was aiming a pistol at me. 
 
 After the speech — a murmur of conversa- 
 tion, then silence. The gayety has gone. 
 "You must speak now," says my neighbor. 
 But what can I say? I would gladly throw 
 the bottle at him. And I go to bed with 
 some sediment in my soul. "Look what a 
 fool sits among you !" 
 
 The maid, when she makes the bed, always 
 puts the slippers under the bed close to the 
 wall. The fat master, unable to bear it any 
 longer, gives the maid notice. It turns out 
 that the doctor told her to put the slippers as 
 far as possible under the bed so as to cure the 
 man of his obesity. 
 
 The club blackballeH a respectable man 
 
 [40] 
 
because all of the members were out of hu- 
 mor; they ruined his prospects. 
 
 A large factory. The young employer 
 plays the superior to all and is rude to the 
 employees who have University degrees. 
 Only the gardener, a German, has the cour- 
 age to be offended: "How dare you, gold 
 bag?' 
 
 A tiny little schoolboy with the name of 
 Trachtenbauer. 
 
 Whenever he reads in the newspaper 
 about the death of a great man, he wears 
 mourning. 
 
 In the theatre. A gentleman asks a lady 
 to take her hat off, as it is in his way. Grum- 
 bling, disagreeableness, entreaties. At last 
 a confession : "Madam, I am the author of 
 the play." She answered : "I don't care." 
 
 In order to act wisely it is not enough to be \ 
 wise (Dostoevsky). 
 
 A. and B. have a bet. A. wins the wager, 
 
 [41] 
 
by eating twelve cutlets; B. does not pay 
 even for the cutlets. 
 
 It is terrible to dine every day with a per- 
 son who stammers and says stupid things. 
 
 Glancing at a plump, appetizing woman: 
 "It is not a woman, it is a full moon." 
 
 From her face one would imagine that 
 under her stays she has got gills. 
 
 For a farce : Kapiton Ivanovitch Boil. 
 
 An income-tax inspector and an excise 
 official, in order to justify their occupations 
 to themselves, say spontaneously: "It is an 
 interesting profession, there is a lot of work, 
 it is a live occupation." 
 
 At twenty she loved Z., at twenty-four she 
 married N. not because she loved him, but 
 because she thought him a good, wise, ideal 
 man. The couple lived happily; every one 
 envies them, and indeed their life passes 
 smoothly and placidly; she is satisfied, and, 
 when people discuss love, she says that for 
 
 [42] 
 
family life not love nor passion is wanted, 
 but affection. But once the music played 
 suddenly, and, inside her heart, everything 
 broke up like ice in spring: she remembered 
 Z. and her love for him, and she thought with 
 despair that her life was ruined, spoilt for 
 ever, and that she was unhappy. Then it 
 happened to her with the NeW Year greet- 
 ings; when people wished her "New Hap- 
 piness," she indeed longed for new happiness. 
 
 Z. goes to a doctor, who examines him and 
 finds that he is suffering from heart disease. 
 Z. abruptly changes his way of life, takes 
 medicine, can only talk about his disease; 
 the whole town knows that he has heart dis- 
 ease and all the doctors, whom he regularly 
 consults, say that he has got heart disease. 
 He does not marry, gives up amateur theat- 
 ricals, does not drink, and when he walks 
 does so slowly and hardly breathes. Eleven 
 years later he has to go to Moscow and there 
 he consults a specialist. The latter finds 
 that his heart is perfectly sound. Z. is over- 
 joyed, but he can no longer return to a nor- 
 mal life, for he has got accustomed to going 
 to bed early and to walking slowly, and he is 
 
 [43] 
 
bored if he cannot speak of his disease. The 
 only result is that he gets to hate doctors — 
 that is all. 
 
 A woman is fascinated not by art, but by 
 the noise made by those who have to do with 
 art. 
 
 N., a dramatic critic, has a mistress X., an 
 actress. Her benefit night. The play is 
 rotten, the acting poor, but N. has to praise. 
 He writes briefly : "The play and the leading 
 actress had an enormous success. Particu- 
 lars to-morrow." As he wrote the last two 
 words, he gave a sigh of relief. Next day 
 he goes to X. ; she opens the door, allows him 
 to kiss and embrace her, and in a cutting tone 
 says: "Particulars to-morrow." 
 
 In Kislovodsk or some other watering- 
 place Z. picked up a girl of twenty-two; she 
 was poor, straightforward, he took pity on 
 her and, in addition to her fee, he left 
 twenty-five roubles on the chest of drawers; 
 he left her room with the feeling of a man 
 who has done a good deed. The next time 
 he visited her, he noticed an expensive ash- 
 
 [44] 
 
tray and a man's fur cap, bought out of his 
 twenty-five roubles — the girl again starving, 
 her cheeks hollow. 
 
 N. mortgages his estate with the Bank of 
 the Nobility at 4 per cent, and then lends the 
 money on mortgage at 12 per cent. 
 
 Aristocrats*? The same ugly bodies and 
 physical uncleanliness, the same toothless 
 old age and disgusting death, as with market- 
 women. 
 
 N., when a group is being photographed, 
 always stands in the front row ; on addresses 
 he always signs the first; at anniversaries he 
 is always the first to speak. Always won- 
 ders : "O soup I O pastries !" 
 
 Z. got tired of having visitors, and he 
 hired a French woman to live in his house as 
 if she were his mistress. This shocked the 
 ladies and he no longer had visitors. 
 
 Z. is a torch-bearer at funerals. He is an 
 idealist. "In the undertaker's shop." 
 
 [45] 
 
N. and Z. are intimate friends, but when 
 they meet in society, they at once make fun 
 of one another — out of shyness. 
 
 Complaint : "My son Stepan was delicate, 
 and I therefore sent him to school in the 
 Crimea, but there he was caned with a vine- 
 branch, and that gave him philoxera in the 
 behind and now the doctors can not cure 
 him." 
 
 Mitya and Katya were told that their 
 papa blasted rocks in the quarry. They 
 wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so 
 they took a pound of powder from their 
 father's room, put it in a bottle, inserted a 
 wick, and placed it under their grandfather's 
 <?hair, when he was dozing after dinner; but 
 soldiers marched by with the band playing — 
 and this was the only thing that prevented 
 them from carrying out their plan. 
 
 Sleep is a marvelous mystery of Nature 
 which renews all the powers of man, bodily 
 and spiritual. (Bishop Porphyrius Usgen- 
 sky, "The Book of My Life.") 
 
 [46] 
 
A woman imagines that she has a peculiar, 
 exceptional constitution, whose ailments are 
 Uifferent from other people's and which can- 
 not stand ordinary medicine. She thinks 
 that her son is unlike other people's sons, 
 that he has to be brought up differently. 
 She believes in principles, but she thinks that 
 they apply to every one but herself, because 
 she lives in exceptional circumstances. The 
 son grows up, and she tries to find an excep- 
 tional wife for him. Those around her suf- 
 fer. The son turns out a scoundrel. 
 
 Poor long-suffering art ! 
 
 A man whose madness takes the form of 
 an idea that he is a ghost : walks at night. 
 
 A sentimental man, like Lavrov, has mo- 
 ments of pleasant emotion and makes the 
 request : "Write a letter to my auntie in Bri- 
 ansk ; she is a darling. . . ." 
 
 There is a bad smell in the bam : ten years 
 ago haymakers slept the night in it and ever 
 since it smells. 
 
 [47] 
 
An officer at a doctor's. The money on a 
 plate. The doctor can see in the looking- 
 glass that the patient takes twenty-five rou- 
 bles from the plate and pays him with it. 
 
 Russia is a nobody's country ! 
 
 Z. who is always saying banal things: 
 "With the agility of a bear," "on one's fav- 
 orite corn." 
 
 A savings bank: the clerk, a very nice 
 man, looks down on the bank, considers it 
 useless — and yet goes on working there. 
 
 A radical lady, who crosses herself at 
 night, is secretly full of prejudice and super- 
 stition, hears that in order to be happy one 
 should boil a black cat by night. She steals 
 a cat and tries to boil it. 
 
 A publisher's twenty-fifth anniversary. 
 Tears, a speech: "I offer ten roubles to the 
 literary fund, the interest to be paid to the 
 poorest writer, but on condition that a spe- 
 cial committee is appointed to work out the 
 
 [48] 
 
rules according to which the distribution 
 shall be made." 
 
 He wore a blouse and despised those who 
 wore frock coats. A stew of trousers. 
 
 The ice cream is made of milk in which, 
 as it were, the patients bathed. 
 
 It was a grand forest of timber, but a 
 Government Conservator was appointed, 
 and in two years time there was no more tim- 
 ber; the caterpillar pest. 
 
 X.: "Choleraic disorder in my stomach 
 started with the cider." 
 
 Of some writers each work taken sepa- 
 rately is brilliant, but taken as a whole they 
 are indefinite ; of others each particular work 
 represents nothing outstanding; but, for all 
 that, taken as a whole they are distinct and 
 brilliant. 
 
 N. rings at the door of an actress; he is 
 nervous, his heart beats, at the critical mo- 
 ment he gets into a panic and runs away ; the 
 
 [49] 
 
maid opens the door and sees nobody. He 
 returns, rings again — but has not the courage 
 to go in. In the end the porter comes out 
 and gives him a thrashing. 
 
 A gentle quiet schoolmistress secretly 
 beats her pupils, because she believes in the 
 good of corporal punishment. 
 
 N. : "Not only the dog, but even the 
 horses howled." 
 
 N. marries. His mother an3 sister see a 
 great many faults in his wife; they are dis- 
 tressed, and only after four or five years 
 realize that she is just like themselves. 
 
 The wife cried. The husband took her 
 by the shoulders and shook her, and she 
 stopped crying. 
 
 After his marriage everything — ^politics, 
 literature, society — did not seem to him as 
 interesting as they had before; but now 
 every trifle concerning his wife and child 
 became a most important matter. 
 
 [50] 
 
"Why are thy songs so short ^" a bird 
 was once asked. "Is it because thou art 
 short of breath?' 
 
 "I have very many songs and I should 
 like to sing them all." 
 
 (A. Daudet.) 
 
 The dog hates the teacher; they tell it not 
 to bark at him ; it looks, does not bark, only 
 whimpers with rage. 
 
 Faith is a spiritual faculty; animals have 
 not got it; savages and uncivilized people 
 have merely fear and doubt. Only highly 
 developed natures can have faith. 
 
 Death is terrible, but still more terrible is 
 the feeling that you might live for ever and 
 never die. 
 
 The public really loves in art that which 
 is banal and long familiar, that to which 
 they have grown accustomed. 
 
 A progressive, educated, young, but stingy 
 school guardian inspects the school every 
 day, makes long speeches there, but does not 
 
 151] 
 
spend a penny on it: the school is falling to 
 pieces, but he considers himself useful and 
 necessary. The teacher hates him, but he 
 does not notice it. The harm is great. 
 Once the teacher, unable to stand it any 
 longer, facing him with anger and disgust, 
 bursts out swearing at him. 
 
 Teacher: "Poushkin's centenary should 
 not be celebrated; he did nothing for the 
 church." 
 
 Miss Guitarov (actress). 
 
 If you wish to become an optimist and 
 understand life, stop believing what people 
 say and write, observe and discover for your- 
 self. 
 
 Husband and wife zealously followed 
 X.'s idea and built up their life according to 
 it as if it were a formula. Only just before 
 Heath they asked themselves : "Perhaps that 
 idea is wrong *? Perhaps the saying 'mens 
 Sana in corpore sano' is untrue?" 
 
 [52] 
 
I detest: a playful Jew, a radical Ukrain- 
 ian, and a drunken German. 
 
 The University brings out all abilities, 
 including stupidity. 
 
 Taking into consideration, dear sir, as a 
 result of this view, dear sir. . . . 
 
 The most intolerable people are provin- 
 cial celebrities. 
 
 Owing to our flightiness, because the ma- 
 jority of us are unable and unaccustomed to 
 think or to look deeply into life's phenom- 
 ena, nowhere else do people so often say: 
 "How banal!" nowhere else do people re- 
 gard so superficially, and often contemptu- 
 ously other people's merits or serious ques- 
 tions. On the other hand nowhere else does 
 the authority of a name weigh so heavily as 
 with us Russians, who have been abased by 
 centuries of slavery and fear freedom. . 
 
 A doctor advised a merchant to eat soup 
 and chicken. The merchant thought the ad- 
 vice ironical. At first he ate a dinner of 
 
 [53] 
 
botvinia an3 pork, and then, as if recollect- 
 ing the doctor's orders, ordered soup and 
 chicken and swallowed them down too, 
 thinking it a great joke. 
 
 Father Epaminond catches fish and puts 
 them in his pocket; then, when he gets home, 
 he takes out a fish at a time, as he wants it, 
 and fries it. 
 
 The nobleman X. sold his estate to N. 
 with all the furniture according to an inven- 
 tory, but he took away everything else, even 
 the oven dampers, and after that N. hated 
 all noblemen. 
 
 The rich, intellectual X., of peasant ori- 
 gin, implored his son: *'Mike, don't get out 
 of your class. Be a peasant until you die, 
 iio not become a nobleman, nor a merchant, 
 nor a bourgeois. If, as you say, the Zem- 
 stvo officer now has the right to inflict cor- 
 poral punishment on peasants, then let him 
 also have the right to punish you." He was 
 proud of his peasant origin, he was even 
 haughty about it. 
 
 [54] 
 
They celebrated the birthday of an honest 
 man. Took the opportunity to show off and 
 praise one another. Only towards the end 
 of the dinner they suddenly discovered that 
 the man had not been invited; they had for- 
 gotten, 
 
 A gentle quiet woman, getting into a tem- 
 per, says : "If I were a man, I would just bash 
 your filthy mug." 
 
 A Mussulman for the salvation of his soul 
 digs a well. It would be a pleasant thing if 
 each of us left a school, a well, or something 
 like that, so that life should not pass away 
 into eternity without leaving a trace behind 
 it. 
 
 We are tired out by servility and hypoc- 
 risy. 
 
 N. once had his clothes torn by dogs, and 
 now, when he pays a call anywhere, he asks: 
 "Aren't there any dogs here"?'' 
 
 A young pimp, 'in order to keep up his 
 powers, always eats garlic. 
 
 [55] 
 
School guardian. Widowed priest plays 
 the harmonium and sings: "Rest with the 
 saints." 
 
 In Jul)^ the red bird sings the whole morn- 
 ing. 
 
 "A large selection of cigs^' ^ — so read X. 
 every day when he went down the street, and 
 wondered how one could deal only in cigs 
 and who wanted them. It took him thirty 
 years before he read it correctly: "A large 
 selection of cigars." 
 
 A bride to an engineer: a dynamite car- 
 tridge filled with one-hundred-rouble notes. 
 
 "I have not read Herbert Spencer. Tell 
 me his subjects. What does he write 
 about?" "I want to paint a panel for the 
 Paris exhibition. Suggest a subject." (A 
 wearisome lady.) 
 
 The idle, so-called governing, classes can- 
 not remain long without war. When there 
 
 ^Cigs in Russian is a kind of fish. 
 
 [56] 
 
is no war they are bored, idleness fatigues 
 and irritates them, they do not know what 
 they live for; they bite one another, try to 
 say unpleasant things to one another, if pos- 
 sible with impunity, and the best of them 
 make the greatest efforts not to bore the 
 others and themselves. But when war 
 comes, it possesses all, takes hold of the im- 
 agination, and the common misfortune unites 
 all. 
 
 An unfaithful wife is a large cold cutlet 
 which one does not want to touch, because 
 some one else has had it in his hands. 
 
 An old maid writes a treatise : "The tram- 
 line of piety." 
 
 Ryzeborsky, Tovbin, Gremoukhin, Kop- 
 tin. 
 
 She had not sufficient skin on her face ; in 
 order to open her eyes she had to shut her 
 mouth and vice versa. 
 
 When she raises her skirt and shows her 
 lace petticoat, it is obvious that she dresses 
 
 [57] 
 
like a woman who is accustomed to be seen 
 by men. 
 
 X. philosophizes: "Take the word 'nose.' 
 In Russia it seems something unmentionable, 
 means the deuce knows what, one may say, 
 the indecent part of the body, and in French 
 it means wedding." And indeed X.'s nose 
 was an indecent part of the body. 
 
 A girl, flirting, chatters: "All are afraid 
 of me . . . men, and the wind ... ah, 
 leave me alone! I shall never marry." 
 And at home poverty, her father a regular 
 drunkard. And if people could see how she 
 and her mother work, how she screens her 
 father, they would feel the deepest 'respect 
 for her and would wonder why she is so 
 ashamed of poverty and work, and is not 
 ashamed of that chatter. 
 
 A restaurant. An advanced conversation. 
 Andrey Andreyevitch, a good-natured bour- 
 geois, suddenly declares: "Do you know, 
 gentlemen, I was once an anarchist!" 
 Every one is astonished. A. A. tells the 
 following tale: a strict father; a technical 
 
 [58] 
 
school opened in the provincial town in a 
 craze for technical education; they have no 
 ideas and they did not know what to teach 
 (since, if you are going to make shoemakers 
 of all the inhabitants, who will buy the 
 shoes'?); he was expelled and his father 
 turned him out of the house; he had to take 
 a job as an assistant clerk on the squire's es- 
 tate; he became enraged with the rich, the 
 well-fed, and the fat; the squire planted 
 cherry trees, A. A. helped him, and suddenly 
 a desire came over him to cut off the squire's 
 white fat fingers with the spade, as if it were 
 by accident; and closing his eyes he struck a 
 blow with the shovel as hard as he could, 
 but it missed. Then he went away ; the for- 
 est, the quiet in the fields, rain ; he longed for 
 warmth, went to his aunt, she gave him tea 
 and rolls — and his anarchism was gone. 
 After the story there passed by the table 
 Councillor of State L. Immediately A. A. 
 gets up and explains how L., Councillor of 
 State, owns houses, etc. 
 
 I was apprenticed to a tailor. He cut the 
 trousers; I did the sewing, but the stripe 
 came down here right over the knee. Then 
 I was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker. T 
 
 [59] 
 
was planing once when the plane flew out of 
 my hands and hit the window; it broke the 
 glass. The squire was a Lett, his name 
 Shtoppev ^ ; and he had an expression on his 
 face as if he were going to wink and say: 
 ''Wouldn't it be nice to have a drink?' In 
 the evenings he drank, drank by himself — 
 and I felt hurt. 
 
 A dealer in cider puts labels on his bottles 
 with a crown printed on them. It irritates 
 and vexes X. who torments himself with the 
 idea that a mere trader is usurping the 
 crown. Xjt cjbmplainis to the authorities, 
 worries every one, seeks redress and so on ; he 
 dies from irritation and worry. 
 
 A governess is teased with the nickname 
 Gesticulation. 
 
 Shaptcherigin, Zambisebulsky, Sveent- 
 chutka, Chemburaklya. 
 
 Senile pomposity, senile vindictiveness. 
 What a number of despicable old men I have 
 known ! 
 
 ^Shtopov means "cork-screw." 
 
 [60] 
 
How delightful when on a bright frosty 
 morning a new sleigh with a rug comes to 
 the door. 
 
 X. arrived to take up duty at N., he shows 
 himself a despot: he is annoyed when some 
 one else is a success; he becomes quite dif- 
 ferent in the presence of a third person; 
 when a woman is present, his tone changes; 
 when he pours out wine, he first puts a little 
 in his own glass and then helps the company; 
 when he walks with a lady he takes her arm ; 
 in general he tries to show refinement. He 
 does not laugh at other people's jokes: 
 "You repeat yourself." "There is nothing 
 new in that." Every one is sick of him; he 
 sermonizes. The old women nickname him 
 "the top." 
 
 A man who can not do anything, does not 
 know how to act, how to enter a room, how 
 to ask for anything. 
 
 Utiujm^ 
 
 A man who always insists: "I haven't 
 
 [61] 
 
got syphilis. Fm 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 man- 
 age 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 
 
 [62] 
 
of not being in love; a peaceful state of 
 mind; long peaceful thoughts. 
 
 Conservative people do so little harm be- 
 cause they are timid and have no confidence 
 in themselves; harm is done not by conserv- 
 ative but by malicious people. 
 
 One of two things: either sit in the car- 
 riage or get out of it. 
 
 For a play : an old woman of radical views 
 dresses like a girl, smokes, cannot exist with- 
 out 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. 
 
 [63] 
 
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). 
 
 Education: "Masticate your food prop- 
 erly," their father told them. And they 
 masticated properly, and walked two hours 
 every day, and washed in cold water, and 
 yet they turned out unhappy and without 
 talent. 
 
 Commercial and industrial medicine. 
 
 N. forty years old married a girl seven- 
 teen. The first night, when they returned 
 to his mining village, she went to bed and 
 suddenly burst into tears, because she did 
 not love him. He is a good soul, is over- 
 
 [64] 
 
whelmed with distress, and goes off to sleep 
 in his little working room. 
 
 On the spot where the former manor house 
 stood there is no trace left; only one lilac 
 bush remains and that for some reason does 
 not bloom. 
 
 Son: "To-day I believe is Thursday." 
 Mother: (not having heard) "What^" 
 Son: (angrily) "Thursday!" (quietly) "I 
 ought to take a bath." 
 Mother: "What'?" 
 Son: (angry and offended) "Bath!" 
 
 N. goes to X. every day, talks to him, and 
 shows real sympathy in his grief; suddenly 
 X. leaves his house, where he was so com- 
 fortable. N. asks X.'s mother why he went 
 away. She answers: "Because you came 
 to see him every day." 
 
 It was such a romantic wedding, and later 
 — what fools ! what babies ! 
 
 Love. Either it is a remnant of some- 
 thing degenerating, something which once 
 
 [65] 
 
has been immense, or it is a particle of what 
 will in the future develop into something 
 immense; but in the present it is unsatisfy- 
 ing, it gives much less than one expects. 
 
 A very intellectual man all his life tells 
 lies about hypnotism, spiritualism — and 
 people believe him; yet he is quite a nice 
 man. 
 
 In Act I, X., a respectable man, borrows 
 a hundred roubles from N., and in the course 
 of all four acts he does not pay it back. 
 
 A grandmother has six sons and three 
 daughters, and best of all she loves the 
 failure, who drinks and has been in prison. 
 
 N., the manager of a factory, rich, with a 
 wife and children, happy, has written "An 
 investigation into the mineral spring at X." 
 He was much praised for it and was invited 
 to join the staff of a newspaper; he gave up 
 his post, went to Petersburg, divorced his 
 wife, spent his money — and went to the 
 dogs. 
 
 [66] 
 
(Looking at a photograph album) : 
 "Whose ugly face is that?" 
 'That's my uncle." 
 
 Alas, what is terrible is not the skeletons, 
 but the fact that I am no longer terrified by 
 them. 
 
 A boy of good family, capricious, full of 
 mischief, obstinate, wore out his whole fam- 
 ily. The father, an official who played the 
 piano, got to hate him, took him into a cor- 
 ner of the garden, flogged him with consid- 
 erable pleasure, and then felt disgusted with 
 himself. The son has grown up and is an 
 officer. 
 
 N. courted Z. for a long time. She was 
 very religious, and, when he proposed to her, 
 she put a dried flower, which he had once 
 given to her, into her prayer-book. 
 
 Z: "As you are going to town, post my 
 letter in the letter-box." 
 
 N: (alarmed) "Where*? I don't know 
 where the letter-box is." 
 
 [67] 
 
Z: "Will you also call at the chemist's 
 and get me some naphthaline^" 
 
 N: (alarmed) "I'll forget the naphtha- 
 line, I'll forget." 
 
 A storm at sea. Lawyers ought to regard 
 it as a crime. 
 
 X. went to stay with his friend in the 
 country. The place was magnificent, but 
 the servants treated him badly, he was un- 
 comfortable, although his friend considered 
 him a big man. The bed was hard, he was 
 not provided with a night shirt and he felt 
 ashamed to ask for one. 
 
 At a rehearsal. The wife: 
 
 "How does that melody in Pagliacci go? 
 Whistle it." 
 
 "One must not whistle on the stage; the 
 stage is a temple." 
 
 He died from fear of cholera. 
 
 As like as a nail is to a requiem. 
 
 A conversation on another planet about 
 [68] 
 
the earth a thousand years hence. "Do you 
 remember that white tree^" 
 
 Anakhthema ! 
 
 Zigzagovsky, Oslizin, Svintchulka, Der- 
 baliguin. 
 
 A woman with money, the money hidden 
 everywhere, in her bosom and between her 
 legs. ... 
 
 i 
 
 All that procedure. 
 
 Treat your dismissal as you would an at- 
 mospheric phenomenon. 
 
 A conversation at a conference of doctors. 
 First doctor: "All diseases can be cured by 
 salt." Second doctor, military: "Every 
 disease can be cured by prescribing no salt." 
 The first points to his wife, the second to his 
 daughter. 
 
 The mother has ideals, the father too; 
 they delivered lectures; they built schools, 
 
 [69] 
 
museums, etc. They grow rich. And their 
 children are most ordinary; spend money, 
 gamble on the Stock Exchange. 
 
 N. married a German when she was seven- 
 teen. 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 vis- 
 itors, 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 
 
 [70] 
 
her hand ; it was too much for her, it turned 
 her head. 
 
 What wonderful names: the little tears 
 of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.^ 
 
 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 an- 
 other 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 under 
 
 * The names of flowers. 
 
 [71] 
 
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 foot- 
 men; 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. 
 
 [72] 
 
When N. married her husband, he was 
 junior Public Prosecutor; he became judge 
 of the High Court and then judge of the 
 Court of Appeals; he is an average uninter- 
 esting man. N. loves her husband very 
 much. She loves him to the grave, writes 
 him meek and touching letters when she 
 hears of his unfaithfulness, and dies with a 
 touching expression of love on her lips. 
 Evidently she loved, not her husband, but 
 some one else, superior, beautiful, non-exist- 
 ent, and she lavished that love upon her hus- 
 band. And after her death footsteps could 
 be heard in her house. 
 
 They are members of a temperance society 
 and now and again take a glass of wine. 
 
 They say: "In the long run truth will 
 triumph;" but it is untrue. 
 
 A clever man says : "This is a lie, but since 
 the people can not do without the lie, since 
 it has the sanction of history, it is dangerous 
 to root it out all at once ; let it go on for the 
 time being but with certain corrections." 
 
 [73] 
 
But the genius says: "This is a lie, therefore 
 
 It must not exist." 
 
 Marie Ivanovna Kladovaya. 
 
 A schoolboy with mustaches, in order to 
 show off, limps with one leg. 
 
 A writer of no talent, who has been writ- 
 ing for a long time, with his air of import- 
 ance reminds one of a high priest. 
 
 Mr. N. and Miss Z. in the city of X. 
 Both clever, educated, of radical views, and 
 both working for the good of their fellow 
 men, but both hardly know each other and 
 in conversation always rail at each other in 
 order to please the stupid and coarse crowd. 
 
 He flourished his hand as if he were going 
 to seize him by the hair and said: "YoU 
 won't escape by that there trick." 
 
 N. has never been in the country and 
 thinks that in the winter country people use 
 skis. "How I would enjoy ski-ing now!" 
 
 [74] 
 
Madam N., who sells herself, says to each 
 man who has her: "I love you because you 
 are not like the rest." 
 
 An intellectual woman, or rather a woman 
 who belongs to an intellectual circle, excels 
 in deceit. 
 
 N. struggled all his life investigating a 
 disease and studying its bacilli; he devoted 
 his whole life to the struggle, expended on it 
 all his powers, and suddenly just before his 
 death it turned out that the disease ik not in 
 the least infectious or dangerous. 
 
 A theatrical manager, lying in bed, read a 
 new play. He read three or four pages and 
 then in irritation threw the play on to the 
 floor, put out the candle, and drew the bed- 
 clothes over him ; a little later, after thinking 
 over it, he took the play up again and began 
 to read it; then, getting angry with the un- 
 inspired tedious work, he again threw it on 
 the floor and put out the candle. A little 
 later he once more took up the play and read 
 it, then he produced it and it was a failure. 
 
 [75] 
 
N., heavy, morose, gloomy, says : "I love 
 a joke, I am always joking." 
 
 The wife writes ; the husband does not like 
 her writing, but out of delicacy says nothing 
 and suffers all his life. 
 
 The fate of an actress: the beginning — 2, 
 well-to-do family in Kertch, life dull and 
 empty; the stage, virtue, passionate love, 
 then lovers; the end: unsuccessful attempt 
 to poison herself, then Kertch, life at her fat 
 uncle's house, the delight of being left alone. 
 Experience shows that an artist must dis- 
 pense with wine, marriage, pregnancy. The 
 stage will become art only in the future, now 
 it is only struggling for the future. 
 
 (Angrily and sententiously) "Why don't 
 you give me your wife's letters to read*? 
 Aren't we relations?" 
 
 Lord, don't allow me to condemn or to 
 speak of what I do not know or do not under- 
 stand. 
 
 Why do people describe only the weak, 
 
 [76] 
 
surly and frail as sinners^ And every one 
 when he advises others to describe only the 
 strong, healthy, and interesting, means him- 
 self. 
 
 For a play : a character always lying with- 
 out rhyme or reason. 
 
 Sexton Catacombov. 
 
 N. N., a litterateur, critic, plausible, self- 
 confident, very liberal minded, talks about 
 poetry; condescendingly agrees with one — 
 and I see that he is a man absolutely without 
 talent (I haven't read him). Some one 
 suggests going to Ai-Petri. I say that it is 
 going to rain, but we set out. The road is 
 muddy, it rains; the critic sits next to me, I 
 feel his lack of talent. He is wooed and 
 made a fuss of as if he were a bishop. And 
 when it cleared up, I went back on foot. 
 How easily people deceive themselves, how 
 they love prophets and soothsayers; what a 
 herd it is! Another person went with us, a 
 Councillor of State, middle-aged, silent be- 
 cause he thinks he is right and despises the 
 critic, because he too is without talent. A 
 
 [77] 
 
girl afraid to smile because she is among 
 clever people. 
 
 Alexey Ivanitch Prokhladitelny (refresh- 
 ing) or Doushespasitelny (soul-saving). A 
 girl : "I would marry him, but am afraid of 
 the name — Madam Refreshing." 
 
 A dream of a keeper in the zoological gar- 
 dens. He dreams that there was presented 
 to the 2^0 first a marmot, then an emu, then 
 a vulture, then a she-goat, then another emu ; 
 the presentations are made without end and 
 the Zoo is crowded out — the keeper wakes up 
 in horror wet with perspiration. 
 
 "To harness slowly but drive rapidly is in 
 the nature of this people," said Bismarck. 
 
 When an actor has money, he doesn't 
 send letters but telegrams. 
 
 With insects, out of the caterpillar comes 
 the butterfly; with mankind it is the other 
 way round, out of the butterfly comes the 
 caterpillar.^ 
 
 iThere is a play on wards here, the Russian word for 
 butterfly also means a woman. 
 
 [78] 
 
The dogs in the house became attached not 
 to their masters who fed and fondled them, 
 but to the cook, a foreigner, who beat them. 
 
 Sophie was afraid that her dog might 
 catch cold, because of the draught. 
 
 The soil is so good, that, were you to plant 
 a shaft, in a year's time a cart would grow 
 out of it. 
 
 X. and Z., very well educated and of 
 radical views, married. In the evening they 
 talked together pleasantly, then quarreled, 
 then came to blows. In the morning both 
 are ashamed and surprised, they think that 
 it must have been the result of some ex- 
 ceptional state of their nerves. Next night 
 again a quarrel and blows. And so every 
 night until at last they realize that they are 
 not at all educated, but savage, just like the 
 majority of people. 
 
 A play: in order to avoid having visitors, 
 Z. pretends to be a regular tippler, although 
 he drinks nothing. 
 
 [79] 
 
When children appear on the scene, then 
 we justify all our weaknesses, our compro- 
 mises, and our snobbery, by saying: "It's 
 for the children's sake." 
 
 Count, I am going away to Mordegundia. 
 (A land of horrible faces.) 
 
 Barbara Nedotyopin. 
 
 Z., an engineer or doctor, went on a visit 
 to his uncle, an editor ; he became interested, 
 began to go there frequently; then became 
 a contributor to the paper, little by little 
 gave up his profession; one night he came 
 out of the newspaper office, remembered, 
 and seized his head in his hands — "all is 
 lost!" He began to go gray. Then it 
 became a habit, he was quite white now 
 and flabby, an editor, respectable but 
 obscure. 
 
 A Privy Councillor, an old man, looking 
 at his children, became a radical himself. 
 
 A newspaper: "Cracknel." 
 
 [8ol 
 
The clown in the circus — that is talent, 
 and the waiter in the frock coat speaking to 
 him — that is the crowd; the waiter with an 
 ironical smile on his face. 
 
 Auntie from Novozybkov. 
 
 He has a rarefaction of the brain and his 
 brains have leaked into his ears. 
 
 "What? Writers? If you like, for a 
 shilling I'll make a writer of you." 
 
 Instead of translator, contractor. 
 
 An actress, forty years old, ugly, ate a 
 partridge for dinner, and I felt sorry for the 
 partridge, for it occurred to me that in its 
 life it had been more talented, more sensible, 
 and more honest than that actress. 
 
 The doctor said to me : "If," says he, "your 
 constitution holds out, drink to your heart's 
 content." (Gorbunov.) 
 
 Carl Kremertartarlau. 
 
 [81] 
 
A field with a distant view, one tiny birch 
 tree. The inscription under the picture: 
 loneliness. 
 
 The guests had gone: they had played 
 cards and everything was in disorder: to- 
 bacco smoke, scraps of paper, and chiefly — 
 the dawn and memories. 
 
 Better to perish from fools than to accept 
 praises from them. 
 
 Why do trees grow and so luxuriantly, 
 when the owners are dead? 
 
 The character keeps a library, but he is 
 always away visiting; there are no readers. 
 
 Life seems great, enormous, and yet one 
 sits on one's piatachok. ^ 
 
 Zolotonosha*? ^ There is no such town! 
 No! 
 
 1 The word means five kopecks and also a pig's snout. 
 
 2 The name of a Russjian town, meaning literally 
 "Gold-carrier." 
 
 [82] 
 
When he laughs, he shows his teeth and 
 
 gums. 
 
 He loved the sort of literature which did 
 not upset him, Schiller, Homer, etc. 
 
 N., a teacher, on her way home in the 
 evening was told by her friend that X. had 
 fallen in love with her, N., and wanted to 
 propose. N., ungainly, who had never be- 
 fore thought of marriage, when she got 
 home, sat for a long time trembling with 
 fear, could not sleep, cried, and towards 
 morning fell in love with X.; next day she 
 heard that the whole thing was a supposition 
 on the part of her friend and that X. was 
 going to marry not her but Y. 
 
 He had a liaison with a woman of forty- 
 five after which he began to write ghost 
 stories. 
 
 I dreamt that I was in India and that 
 one of the local princes presented me with 
 an elephant, two elephants even. I was so 
 
 [83] 
 
worried about the elephant that I woke up. 
 
 An old man of eighty says to another old 
 man of sixty: "You ought to be ashamed, 
 young man." 
 
 When they sang in church, **Now is the 
 beginning of our salvation," he ate glavizna 
 at home ; on the day of St. John the Baptist 
 he ate no food that was circular and flogged 
 his children.^ 
 
 A journalist wrote lies in the newspaper, 
 but he thought he was writing the truth. 
 
 If you are afraid of loneliness, do not 
 marry. 
 
 He himself is rich, but his mother is in 
 the workhouse. 
 
 He married, furnished a house, bought a 
 writing-table, got everything in order, but 
 found he had nothing to write. 
 
 1 Glavizna in Russian is the name of a fish and also 
 means beginning; the root of the verbs "to behead" and 
 "to flog" are the same. 
 
 [84] 
 
Faust: "What you don't know is just what 
 you want; what you know is what you can't 
 use.'' 
 
 Although you may tell lies, people will 
 believe you, if only you speak with 
 authority. 
 
 As I shall lie in the grave alone, so in 
 fact I live alone. 
 
 A German: "Lord have mercy on us, 
 
 grieshniki'' ^ 
 
 ''O my dear little pimple!" said the 
 bride tenderly. The bridegroom thought 
 for a while, then felt hurt — they parted. 
 
 They were mineral water bottles with 
 preserved cherries in them. 
 
 An actress who spoilt all her parts by 
 very bad acting — and this continued all 
 her life long until she died. Nobody liked 
 
 1 Grieshniki means "sinners," but sounds like 
 grietchnieviki which means "buckwheat cakes." 
 
 [85] 
 
her; she ruined all the best parts; and yet 
 she went on acting until she was seventy. 
 
 He alone is all right and can repent who 
 feels himself to be wrong. 
 
 The archdeacon curses the "doubters," 
 and they stand in the choir and sing anath- 
 ema to themselves (Skitalez). 
 
 He imagined that his wife lay with her 
 legs cut off and that he nursed her in order 
 to save his soul. . . . 
 
 Madame Snuffley. 
 
 The black-beetles have left the house; the 
 house will be burnt down. 
 
 "Dmitri, the Pretender, and Actors." 
 "Turgenev and the Tigers." Articles like 
 that can be and are written. 
 
 A title: Lemon Peel. 
 
 I am your legitimate husband. 
 [86] 
 
An abortion, because while bathing a wave 
 struck her, a wave of the ocean; because of 
 the eruption of Vesuvius. 
 
 It seems to me : the sea and myself — and 
 nothing else. 
 
 Education: his three-year-old son wore 
 a black frock-coat, boots, and waistcoat. 
 
 With pride: "Pm not of Yuriev, but of 
 Dorpat University." ^ 
 
 His beard looked like the tail of a fish. 
 
 A Jew, Ziptchik. 
 
 A girl, when she giggles, makes noises as 
 if she were putting her head in cold water. 
 
 "Mamma, what is a thunderbolt maHe 
 of?" 
 
 On the estate there is a bad smell, and 
 bad taste; the trees are planted anyhow, 
 
 ^ Yuriev is the Russian name of the town Doroat 
 
stupidly; and away in a remote comer the 
 lodge-keeper's wife all day long washes 
 the guest's linen — and nobody sees her; and 
 the owners are allowed to talk away whole 
 days about their rights and their nobility. 
 
 She fed her dog on the best caviare. 
 
 Our self-esteem and conceit are European, 
 but our culture and actions are Asiatic. 
 
 A black dog — ^he looks as if he were 
 wearing goloshes. 
 
 A Russian's only hope — to win two him- 
 dred thousand roubles in a lottery. 
 
 She is wicked, but she taught her children 
 good. 
 
 Every one has something to hide. 
 
 The title of N.'s story: The Eower of 
 Harmonies. 
 
 O how nice it would be if bachelors or 
 widowers were appointed Governors. 
 [88] 
 
A Moscow actress never in her life saw 
 a turkey-hen. 
 
 On the lips of the old I hear either stu- 
 pidity or malice. 
 
 "Mamma, Pete did not say his prayers." 
 Fete 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 Dukho- 
 bor, 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 
 
 [89] 
 
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, 
 
 [90] 
 
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. 
 
 At three o'clock in the morning they wake 
 him: he has to go to his job at the railway 
 station, and so every day for the last four- 
 teen years. 
 
 A lady grumbles : "I write to my son that 
 he should change his linen every Saturday. 
 
 [91] 
 
He replies: Why SaturSay, not Monday?' 
 I answer : Well, all right, let it be Monday.' 
 And he : Why Monday, not Tuesday?' He 
 is a nice honest man, but I get worried by 
 him," 
 
 A clever man loves learning but is a fool 
 at teaching. 
 
 The sermons of priests, archimandrites, 
 and bishops are wonderfully like one an- 
 other. 
 
 One remembers the arguments about the 
 brotherhood of man, public good, and work 
 for the people, but really there were no such 
 arguments, one only drank at the University. 
 They write : "One feels ashamed of the men 
 with University degrees who once fought 
 for human rights and freedon of religion and 
 conscience" — ^but they never fought. 
 
 Every day after dinner the husband 
 threatens his wife that he will become a 
 monk, and the wife cries. 
 
 Mordokhvostov. 
 
 [92] 
 
Husband and wife have lived together and 
 quarreled for eighteen years. At last he 
 makes a confession, which was in fact un- 
 true, of having been false to her, and they 
 part to his great pleasure and to the wrath 
 of the whole town. 
 
 A useless thing, an album with forgotten, 
 uninteresting photographs, lies in the corner 
 on a chair; it has been lying there for the 
 last twenty years and no one makes up his 
 mind to throw it away. 
 
 N. tells how forty years ago X., a won- 
 derful and extraordinary man, had saved the 
 lives of five people, and N. feels it strange 
 that every one listened with indifference, 
 that the history of X. is already forgotten, 
 uninteresting. . . . 
 
 They fell upon the soft caviare greedily, 
 and devoured it in a minute. 
 
 In the middle of a serious conversation 
 he says to his little son: "Button up your 
 trousers." 
 
 [93] 
 
Man will only become better when you 
 make him see what he is like. 
 
 Dove-colored face. 
 
 The squire feeds his pigeons, canaries, 
 and fowls on pepper, acids, and all kinds of 
 rubbish in order that the birds may change 
 their color — and that is his sole occupation: 
 he boasts of it to every visitor. 
 
 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 Hay, 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 with- 
 out that. 
 
 [94] 
 
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 bor- 
 rowing money from Z., the lover, and con- 
 tinues 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: "Now- 
 adays our fellows crawl out from all sorts 
 of unexpected holes." 
 
 The squire N. always quarrels with his 
 neighbors who are Molokans ^ ; he goes to 
 court, abuses and curses them; but when at 
 
 1 Molokans are a religious sect in Russia. 
 
 [95] 
 
last they leave, he feels there is an empty 
 place; he ages rapidly and pines away. 
 
 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. 
 
 [96] 
 
Well, you are a Councillor; but whom do 
 you counsel? God forbid that any one 
 should listen to your counsels. 
 
 The little town of Torjok. A sitting of 
 the town council. Subject: the raising of 
 the rates. Decision: to invite the Pope to 
 settle down in Torjok — to choose it as his 
 residence. 
 
 S.'s logic: I am for religious toleration, 
 but against religious freedom; one cannot 
 allow what is not in the strict sense ortho- 
 dox. 
 
 St. Piony and Epinach. ii March, Pupli 
 13 m. 
 
 Poetry anH works of art contain not what 
 is needed but what people desire; they do 
 not go further than the crowd and they ex- 
 press only what the best in the crowd desire. 
 
 A little man is very cautious; he sends 
 even letters of congratulation by registered 
 post in order to get a receipt. 
 
 [97] 
 
Russia is an enormous plain across which 
 wander mischievous men. 
 
 Platonida Ivanovna. 
 
 If you are politically sound, that is enough 
 for you to be considered a perfectly satis- 
 factory citizen ; the same thing with radicals, 
 to be politically unsound is enough, every- 
 thing else will be ignored. 
 
 A man who when he fails opens his eyes 
 wide. 
 
 Ziuzikov. 
 
 A Coimcillor of State, a respectable man ; 
 it suddenly comes out that he has secretly 
 kept a brothel. 
 
 N. has written a good play ; no one praises 
 him or is pleased; they all say: "We'll see 
 what you write next." 
 
 The more important people came in by 
 
 [98] 
 
the front door, the simple folk by the back 
 door. 
 
 He : "And in our town there lived a man 
 whose name was Kishmish (raisin). He 
 called himself Kishmish, but every one knew 
 that he was Kishmish." 
 
 She (after some thought) : "How annoy- 
 ing ... if only his name had been Sultana, 
 but Kishmish I . . /' 
 
 Blagovospitanny. 
 
 Most honored Iv-Iv-itch! 
 
 How intolerable people are sometimes 
 who are happy and successful in everything. 
 
 They begin gossiping that N. is living 
 with Z. ; little by little an atmosphere is 
 created in which a liaison of N. and Z. be- 
 comes inevitable. 
 
 When the locust was a plague, I wrote 
 against the locust and enchanted every one, 
 I was rich and famous; but now, when the 
 
 [99] 
 
locust has long ago disappeared and is for- 
 gotten, I am mergeH in the crowd, forgotten, 
 and not wanted. 
 
 Merrily, joyfully: "I have the honor to 
 introduce you to I v. I v. Izgoyev, my wife's 
 lover." 
 
 Everywhere on the estate are notices: 
 "Trespassers will be prosecuted," "Keep 
 off the flowers," etc. 
 
 In the great house is a fine library which 
 is talked about but is never used; they give 
 you watery coffee which you cannot drink; 
 the garden is tasteless with no flowers in it 
 — and they pretend that all this is some- 
 thing Tolstoian. 
 
 He learnt Swedish in order to study Ibsen, 
 spent a lot of time and trouble, and suddenly 
 realized that Ibsen is not important; he 
 could not conceive what use he could now 
 make of the Swedish language. ^ 
 
 1 Ibsen wrote in Norwegian of course. Responding to 
 a request for his interpretation of this curious paragraph. 
 Mr. Koteliansky writes: 
 
 "Chekhov had a very high opinion of Ibsen; the 
 
 [loo] 
 
N. makes a living by exterminating bugs; 
 and for the purposes of his trade he reads 
 
 the works of . If in "The Cossacks," 
 
 bugs are not mentioned, it means that "The 
 Cossacks" is a bad book. 
 
 Man is what he believes. 
 
 A clever girl: "I cannot pretend ... I 
 never tell a lie ... I have principles" — 
 and all the time "I . . . I . . . I , . ." 
 
 N. is angry with his wife who is an actress, 
 and without her knowledge gets abusive 
 
 paragraph, I am sure, is by no meani aimed at Ibsen. 
 Most probably the paragraph, as well as many others in 
 the Notes, is something which C. either personally or in- 
 directly heard someone say. You will see that Kuprin 
 ["Reminiscences of Chekhov," by Gorky, Kuprin and 
 Bunin, New York: Huebsch.] told C. the anecdote about 
 the actor whose wife asked him to whistle a melody on 
 the stage during a rehearsal. In C.'s Notes you have that 
 anecdote, somewhat shortened and the names changed, 
 without mentioning the source. 
 
 "The reader, on the whole, may puzzle his head over 
 many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find 
 explanations each time. What the reader hat to 
 remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in 
 his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal 
 of light on C.'s mentality and process of working." 
 
 [lOl] 
 
criticisms published about her in the news- 
 papers. 
 
 A nobleman boasts "This house of mine 
 was built in the time of Dmitry Donskoy." 
 
 "Your Worship, he called my dog a bad 
 name : 'son of a bitch.' " 
 
 The snow fell and did not lie on the 
 ground reddened with blood. 
 
 He left everything to charity, so that 
 nothing should go to his relations and chil- 
 dren, whom he hated. 
 
 A very amorous man; he is no sooner 
 introduced to a girl than he becomes a he- 
 goat. 
 
 A nobleman Drekoliev. 
 
 I dread the idea that a chamberlain will 
 be present at the opening of my petition. 
 
 He was a rationalist, but he had to confess 
 that he liked the ringing of church bells. 
 [102] 
 
The father a famous general, nice pictures, 
 expensive furniture; he died; the daughters 
 received a good education, but are slovenly, 
 read little, ride, and are dull. 
 
 They are honest and truthful so long as it 
 is unnecessary. 
 
 A rich merchant would like to have a 
 shower bath in his W. C. 
 
 In the early morning they ate okroshka, ^ 
 
 "If you lose this talisman," said grand- 
 mother, "you will die." And suddenly I 
 lost it, tortured myself, was afraid that I 
 would die. And now, imagine, a miracle 
 happened: I found it and continued to live. 
 
 Everybody goes to the theatre to see my 
 play, to learn something instantly from it, 
 to make some sort of profit, and I tell you: 
 I have not the time to bother about that 
 canaille. 
 
 ^ A cold dish composed of cider and hash. 
 
 [103] 
 
The people hate and despise everything 
 new and useful ; when there was cholera, they 
 hated and killed the doctors and they love 
 vodka; by the people's love or hatred one can 
 estimate the value of what they love or hate. 
 
 Looking out of the window at the corpse 
 which is being borne to the cemetery: "You 
 are dead, you are being carried to the cem- 
 etery, and I will go and have my breakfast." 
 
 A Tchech Vtitchka. 
 
 A man, forty years old, married a girl of 
 twenty-two who read only the very latest 
 writers, wore green ribbons, slept on yellow 
 pillows, and believed in her taste and her 
 opinions as if they were law ; she is nice, not 
 silly, and gentle, but he separates from her. 
 
 When one longs for a drink, it seems as 
 though one could drink a whole ocean — that 
 is faith; but when one begins to drink, one 
 can only drink altogether two glasses — that 
 is science. 
 
 For a farce : Fildekosov, Poprygunov. 
 [104] 
 
In former times a nice man, with prin- 
 ciples, who wanted to be respected, would try 
 to become a general or priest, but now he 
 goes in for being a writer, professor. . . . 
 
 There is nothing which history will not 
 justify. 
 
 Zievoulia.* 
 
 The crying of a nice child is ugly; so in 
 bad verses you may recognize that the author 
 is a nice man. 
 
 If you wish women to love you, be orig- 
 inal; I know a man who used to wear felt 
 boots summer and winter, and women fell in 
 love with him. 
 
 I arrive at Yalta. Every room is en- 
 gaged. I go to the "Italy" — not a room 
 available. "What about my room number 
 35" — "It is engaged." A lady. They say: 
 "Would you like to stay with this lady*? 
 
 1 A name or word invented by Chekhov meaning "One 
 who yawns for a long time with pleasure." 
 
 [105] 
 
The lady has no objection." I stay in her 
 room. Conversation. Evening. The Tartar 
 guide comes in. My ears are stopped, my 
 eyes blindfolded; I sit and see nothing and 
 hear nothing. . . . 
 
 A young lady complains: "My poor 
 brother gets such a small salary — only seven 
 thousand !" 
 
 She: "I see only one thing now: you have 
 a large mouth ! A large mouth ! An enor- 
 mous mouth !" 
 
 The horse is a useless and pernicious ani- 
 mal ; a great deal of land has to be tilled for 
 it, it accustoms man not to employ his own 
 muscles, it is often an object of luxury; it 
 makes man effeminate. For the future not 
 a single horse. 
 
 N. a singer; speaks to nobody, his throat 
 muffled up — he takes care of his voice, but 
 no one has ever heard him sing. 
 
 [106] 
 
About absolutely everything: "What's the 
 good of that*? It's useless!'' 
 
 He wears felt boots summer and winter 
 and gives this explanation: "It's better for 
 the head, because the blood, owing to the 
 heat, is drawn down into the feet, and the 
 thoughts are clearer." 
 
 A woman is jocularly called Fiodor Ivano- 
 vitch. 
 
 A farce: N., in order to marry, greased 
 the bald patch on his head with an ointment 
 which he read of in an advertisement, and 
 suddenly there began to grow on his head 
 pig's bristles. 
 
 What does your husband do? — He takes 
 castor oil. 
 
 A girl writes: "We shall live intolerably 
 near you." 
 
 N. has been for long in love with Z. who 
 married X. ; two years after the marriage Z. 
 
 [107] 
 
comes to N., cries, wishes to tell him some- 
 thing; N. expects to hear her complain 
 against her husband ; but it turns out that Z. 
 has come to te'll of her love for K. 
 
 N. a well known lawyer in Moscow; Z., 
 who like N. was born in Taganrog, comes 
 to Moscow and goes to see the celebrity; he 
 is received warmly, but he remembers the 
 school to which they both went, remembers 
 how N. looked in his uniform, becomes 
 agitated by envy, sees that N.'s flat is in bad 
 taste, that N. himself talks a great deal ; and 
 he leaves disenchanted by envy and by the 
 meanness which before he did not even 
 suspect was in him. 
 
 The title of a play : The Bat, 
 
 Everything which the old cannot enjoy is 
 forbidden or considered wrong. 
 
 When he was getting on in years, he mar- 
 ried a very young girl, and so she faded and 
 withered away with him. 
 
 All his life he wrote about capitalism and 
 [108] 
 
millions, and he had never had any money, 
 
 A young lady fell in love with a handsome 
 constable. 
 
 N. was a very good, fashionable tailor; 
 but he was spoiled and ruined by trifles; at 
 one time he made an overcoat without 
 pockets, at another a collar which was much 
 too high. 
 
 A farce : Agent oi freight transport com- 
 pany and of fire insurance company. 
 
 Any one can write a play which might be 
 produced. 
 
 A country house. Winter. N., ill, sits 
 in his room. In the evening there suddenly 
 arrives from the railway station a stranger 
 Z., a young girl, who introduces herself and 
 says that she has come to look after the in- 
 valid. He is perplexed, frightened, he re- 
 fuses; then Z. says that at any rate she will 
 stay the night. A day passes, two, and she 
 goes on living there. She has an unbearable 
 temper, she poisons one's existence. 
 [109] 
 
A private room in a restaurant. A rich 
 man Z., tying his napkin round his neck, 
 touching the sturgeon with his fork: "At 
 least I'll have a snack before I die" — and he 
 has been saying this for a long time, daily. 
 
 By his remarks on Strindberg and litera- 
 ture generally L. L. Tolstoi reminds one very 
 much of Madam Loukhmav. ^ 
 
 Diedlov, when he speaks of the Deputy 
 Governor or the Governor, becomes a roman- 
 ticist, remembering "The Arrival of the 
 Deputy Governor" in the book A Hundred 
 Russian Writers, 
 
 A play: the Bean of Life. 
 
 A vet. belongs to the stallion class of 
 people. 
 
 Consultation., 
 
 The sun shines and in my soul is darkness. 
 
 iL. L. Tolstoi was Leo Nicolaievitch'a ion, Madame 
 Loukhmav a tenth rate woman writer. 
 
 [no] 
 
In S. I made the acquaintance of the bar- 
 rister Z. — a sort of Nika, The Fair. . . He 
 has several children; with all of them he is 
 magisterial, gentle, kind, not a single rude 
 word; I soon learn that he has another fam- 
 ily. Then he invites me to his daughter's 
 wedding; he prays, makes a genuflection, 
 and says: "I still preserve religious feeling; I 
 am a believer." And when in his presence 
 people speak of education, of women, he has 
 a naive expression, exactly as if he did not 
 understand. When he makes a speech in 
 Court, his face looks as if he were praying. 
 
 ''Mammy, don't show yourself to the 
 guests, you are very fat." 
 
 Love*? In love? Never! I am a Gov- 
 ernment clerk. 
 
 He knows little, even as a babe who has 
 not yet come out of his mother's womb. 
 
 From childhood until extreme old age N. 
 has had a passion for spying. 
 
 He uses clever words, that's all — phi- 
 losophy . . . equator . . . (for a play). 
 
 [Ill] 
 
The stars have gone out long ago, but they 
 still shine for the crowd. 
 
 As soon as he became a scholar, he began 
 to expect honors. 
 
 He was a prompter, but got disgusted and 
 and gave it up ; for about fifteen years he did 
 not go to the theatre ; then he went and saw a 
 play, cried with emotion, felt sad, and, when 
 his wife asked him on his return how he 
 liked the theatre, he answered: "I do not 
 like it." 
 
 The parlormaid Nadya fell in love with 
 an exterminator of bugs and black beetles. 
 
 A Councillor of State; it came out after 
 his death that, in order to earn a rouble, he 
 was employed at the theatre to bark like a 
 dog; he was poor. 
 
 You must have decent, well-dressed chil- 
 dren, and your children too must have a nice 
 house and children, and their children again 
 children and nice houses; and what is it all 
 for*? — ^The devil knows. 
 [112] 
 
Perkaturin. 
 
 Every day he forces himself to vomit— for 
 the sake of his health, on the advice of a 
 friend. 
 
 A Government official began to live an 
 original life; a very tall chimney on his 
 house, green trousers, blue waistcoat, a dyed 
 dog, dinner at midnight; after a week he 
 gave it up. 
 
 Success has already given that man a lick 
 with its tongue. 
 
 In the bill presented by the hotel-keeper 
 was among other things : "Bugs — fifteen ko- 
 pecks." Explanation. 
 
 "N. has fallen into poverty." — "What? 
 I can't hear." — "I say N. has fallen into 
 poverty." — "What exactly do you say*? 
 I can't make out. What N.?"— "The 
 N. who married Z."— "Well, what of it?" 
 — "I say we ought to help him." — "Eh? 
 What him? Why help? What do you 
 mean?" — and so on. 
 
 [113] 
 
How pleasant to sit at home, when the 
 rain is drumming on the roof, and to feel 
 that there are no heavy dull guests coming to 
 one's house. 
 
 N. always even after five glasses of wine, 
 takes valerian drops. 
 
 He lives with a parlormaid who respect- 
 fully calls him Your Honor. 
 
 I rented a country house for the summer; 
 the owner, a very fat old lady, lived in the 
 lodge, I in the great house ; her husband was 
 dead and so were all her children, she was 
 left alone, very fat, the estate sold for debt, 
 her furniture old and in good taste; all day 
 long she reads letters which her husband and 
 son had written to her. Yet she is an opti- 
 mist. When some one fell ill in my house, 
 she smiled and said again and again: "My 
 dear, God will help." 
 
 N. and Z. are school friends, each seven- 
 teen or eighteen years old; and suddenly N. 
 learns that Z. is with child by N.'s father. 
 
 [1141 
 
The priezt came . . . zaint . . . praize 
 to thee, O Lord. 
 
 What empty words these discussions about 
 the rights of women! If a dog writes a 
 work of talent, they will even accept the dog. 
 
 Haemorrhage : "It's an abscess that's just 
 burst inside you . . . it's all right, have some 
 more vodka." 
 
 The intelligentsia are good for nothing, be- 
 cause they drink a lot of tea, talk a lot in 
 stuffy rooms, with empty bottles. 
 
 When she was young, she ran away with a 
 doctor, a Jew, and had a daughter by him; 
 now she hates her past, hates the red-haired 
 daughter, and the father still loves her as 
 well as the daughter, and walks under her 
 window, chubby and handsome. 
 
 He picked his teeth and put the toothpick 
 back into the glass. 
 
 The husband and wife could not sleep; 
 
 [115] 
 
they began to discuss how bad literature had 
 become and how nice it would be to publish a 
 magazine: the idea carried them away; they 
 lay awake silent for awhile. "Shall we ask 
 Boborykin to write*?" he asked. "Certainly, 
 do ask him." At five in the morning he 
 starts for his work at the depot ; she sees him 
 off walking in the snow to the gate, shuts the 
 gate after him. . . . "And shall we ask Pota- 
 penko^" he asks, already outside the gate. 
 
 When he learnt that his father had been 
 raised to the nobility he began to sign him- 
 self Alexis. 
 
 Teacher : " The collision of a train with 
 human victims' . . . that is wrong ... it 
 ought to be 'the collision of a train that re- 
 sulted in human victims' ... for the cause 
 of the people on the line." 
 
 Title of play: Golden Rain. 
 
 There is not a single criterion which can 
 serve as the measure of the non-existent, of 
 the non-human. 
 
 [116] 
 
A patriot: "And do you know that our 
 Russian macaroni is better than the Italian*? 
 I'll prove it to you. Once at Nice they 
 brought me sturgeon — do you know, I nearly 
 cried." And the patriot did not see that he 
 was only gastronomically patriotic. 
 
 A grumbler: "But is turkey food? Is 
 caviare food?" 
 
 A very sensible, clever young woman; 
 when she was bathing, he noticed that she 
 had a narrow pelvis and pitifully thin hips — 
 and he got to hate her. 
 
 A clock. Yegor the locksmith's clock at 
 one time loses and at another gains exactly 
 as if to spite him; deliberately it is now at 
 twelve and then quite suddenly at eight. 
 It does it out of animosity as though the 
 devil were in it. The locksmith tries to find 
 out the cause, and once he plunges it in holy 
 water. 
 
 Formerly the heroes in novels and stories 
 (e. g. Petchorin, Onyeguin) were twenty 
 years old, but now one cannot have a hero 
 
 [117] 
 
under thirty to thirty-five years. The same 
 will soon happen with heroines. 
 
 N. is the son of a famous father; he is very 
 nice, but, whatever he does, every one says: 
 "That is very well, but it is nothing to the 
 father." Once he gave a recitation at an 
 evening party; all the performers had a 
 success, but of him they said : "That is very 
 well, but still it is nothing to the father." 
 He went home and got into bed and, look- 
 ing at his father's portrait, shook his fist at 
 him. 
 
 We fret ourselves to reform life, in order 
 that posterity may be happy, and posterity 
 will say as usual : "In the past it used to be 
 better, the present is worse than the past." 
 
 My motto: I don't want anything. 
 
 When a decent working-man takes him- 
 self and his work critically, people call him 
 grumbler, idler, bore; but when an idle 
 scoundrel shouts that it is necessary to work, 
 he is applauded. 
 
 ["8] 
 
When a woman destroys things like a man, 
 people think it natural and everybody 
 understands it; but when like a man, she 
 wishes or tries to create, people think it un- 
 natural and cannot reconcile themselves to it. 
 
 When I married, I became an old woman. 
 
 He looked down on the world from the 
 height of his baseness. 
 
 "Your fiancee is very pretty." "To me 
 all women are alike." 
 
 He dreamt of winning three hundred 
 thousand in lottery, twice in succession, be- 
 cause three hundred thousand would not be 
 enough for him. 
 
 N., a retired Councillor of State, lives in 
 the country ; he is sixty-six. He is educated, 
 liberal-minded, reads, likes an argument. 
 He learns from his guests that the new cor- 
 oner Z. walks about with a slipper on one 
 foot and a boot on the other, and lives with 
 another man's wife. N. thinks all the time 
 of Z. ; he does nothing but talk about him, 
 
 [119] 
 
how he walks about in one slipper and lives 
 with another man's wife; he talks of nothing 
 else; at last he goes to sleep with his own 
 wife (he has not slept with her for the last 
 eight years), he is agitated and the whole 
 time talks about Z. Finally he has a stroke, 
 his arm and leg are paralyzed — and all this 
 from agitation about Z. The doctor comes. 
 With him too N. talks about Z. The doctor 
 says that he knows Z., that Z. now wears two 
 boots, his leg being well, and that he has 
 married the lady. 
 
 I hope that in the next world I shall be 
 able to look back at this life and say : "Those 
 were beautiful dreams. . . ." 
 
 The squire N., looking at the undergrad- 
 uate and the young girl, the children of his 
 steward Z.: "I am sure Z. steals from me, 
 lives grandly on stolen money, the under- 
 graduate and the girl know it or ought to 
 know it; why then do they look so decent*?" 
 
 She is fond of the word "compromise," 
 and often uses it; "I am incapable of com- 
 [120] 
 
promise. ..." "A board which has the 
 shape of a parallelepiped." 
 
 The hereditary honorable citizen Ozia- 
 boushkin always tries to make out that his 
 ancestors had the right to the title of Count. 
 
 "He is a perfect dab at it." ''O, O, don't 
 use that expression; my mother is very par- 
 ticular." 
 
 I have just married my third husband . . . 
 the name of the first was Ivan Makarivitch 
 ... of the second Peter . . . Peter ... I 
 have forgotten." 
 
 The writer Gvozdikov thinks that he is 
 very famous, that every one knows him. He 
 arrives at S., meets an officer who shakes his 
 hand for a long time, looking with rapture 
 into his face. G. is glad, he too shakes 
 hands warmly. ... At last the officer: "And 
 how is your orchestra*? Aren't you the con- 
 ductor?' 
 
 [121] 
 
Morning; M.'s mustaches are in curl 
 papers. 
 
 And it seemed to him that he was highly- 
 respected and valued everywhere, anywhere, 
 even in railway buffets, and so he always ate 
 with a smile on his face. 
 
 The birds sing, and already it begins to 
 seem to him that they do not sing, but whine. 
 
 N., father of a family, listens to his son 
 reading aloud J. J. Rousseau to the family, 
 and thinks: "Well, at any rate, J. J. Rous- 
 seau had no gold medal on his breast, but I 
 have one." 
 
 N. has a spree with his step-son, an under- 
 graduate, and they go to a brothel. In the 
 morning the undergraduate is going away, 
 his leave is up ; N. sees him off. The under- 
 graduate reads him a sermon on their bad 
 behavior ; they quarrel. N : "As your father, 
 I curse you." — "And I curse you." 
 
 A doctor is called in, but a nurse sent for. 
 
 [122] 
 
N. N. V. never agrees with anyone : "Yes, 
 the ceiling is white, that can be admitted; 
 but white, as far as is known, consists of the 
 seven colors of the spectrum, and it is quite 
 possible that in this case one of the colors 
 is darker or brighter than is necessary for the 
 production of pure white ; I had rather think 
 a bit before saying that the ceiling is white." 
 
 He holds himself exactly as though he 
 were an icon. 
 
 "Are you in love*?" — "There's a little bit 
 of that in it." 
 
 Whatever happens, he says: "It is the 
 priests." 
 
 Firzikov. 
 
 N. dreams that he is returning from 
 abroad, and that at Verzhbolovo, in spite of 
 his protests, they make him pay duty on his 
 wife. 
 
 When that radical, having dined with his 
 coat off, walked into his bedroom and I saw 
 [123] 
 
the braces on his back, it became clear to me 
 that that radical is a bourgeois, a hopeless 
 bourgeois. 
 
 Some one saw Z., an unbeliever and blas- 
 phemer, secretly praying in front of the icon 
 in the cathedral, and they all teased him. 
 
 They called the manager "four-funneled 
 cruiser,'' because he had already gone 
 "through the chimney" (bankrupt) four 
 times. 
 
 He is not stupid, he was at the university, 
 has studied long and assiduously, but in writ- 
 ing he makes gross mistakes. 
 
 Countess Nadin's daughter gradually 
 turns into a housekeeper; she is very timid, 
 and can only say "No-o," "Yes-s," and 
 her hands always tremble. Somehow or 
 other a Zemstvo official wished to marry her; 
 he is a widower and she marries him, with 
 him too it was "Yes-s," "No-o"; she was 
 very much afraid of her husband and did not 
 love him; one day he happened to give a 
 loud cough, it gave her a fright, and she died. 
 [124] 
 
Caressing her lover: "My vulture." 
 
 For a play : If only you would say some- 
 thing funny. But for twenty years we have 
 lived together and you have always talked of 
 serious things; I hate serious things. 
 
 A cook, with a cigarette in her mouth, lies: 
 "I studied at a high school ... I know 
 what for the earth is round." 
 
 "Society for finding and raising anchors 
 of steamers and barges," and the Society's 
 agent at all functions without fail makes 
 a speech, a la N., and without fail 
 promises. 
 
 Super-mysticism. 
 
 When I become rich, I shall have a harem 
 in which I shall keep fat naked women, with 
 their buttocks painted green. 
 
 A shy young man came on a visit for the 
 night : suddenly a deaf old woman came into 
 his room, carrying a cupping-glass, and bled 
 
 [125] 
 
him; he thought that this must be the usual 
 thing and so did not protest; in the morning 
 it turned out that the old woman had made a 
 mistake. 
 
 Surname: Verstax. 
 
 The more stupid the peasant, the better 
 does the horse understand him. 
 
 [126] 
 
THEMES, THOUGHTS, NOTES, AND 
 FRAGMENTS. 
 
. . . How stupid and for the most part how 
 false, since if one man seeks to devour an- 
 other or tell him something unpleasant it 
 has nothing to do with Granovsky.^ 
 
 I left Gregory Ivanovitch's feeling crushed 
 and mortally offended. I was irritated 
 by smooth words and by those who speak 
 them, and on reaching home I meditated 
 thus: some rail at the world, others at the 
 crowd, that is to say praise the past and 
 blame the present; they cry out that there 
 are no ideals and so on, but all this has al- 
 ready been said twenty or thirty years ago; 
 these are worn-out forms which have already 
 served their time, and whoever repeats them 
 now, he too is no longer young and is him- 
 self worn out. With last year's foliage 
 there decay too those who live in it. I 
 thought, we uncultured, worn-out people, 
 banal in speech, stereotyped in intentions, 
 have grown quite mouldy, and, while we in- 
 tellectuals are rummaging among old rags 
 
 lA well-known Radical professor^ a Westerner. 
 
 [1291 
 
and, according to the old Russian custom, 
 biting one another, there is boiling up around 
 us a life which we neither know nor notice. 
 Great events will take us unawares, like 
 sleeping fairies, and you will see that Sid- 
 orov, the merchant, and the teacher of the 
 school at Yeletz, who see and know more 
 than we do, will push us far into the back- 
 ground, because they will accomplish more 
 than all of us put together. And I thought 
 that were we now to obtain political liberty, 
 of which we talk so much, while engaged in 
 biting one another, we should not know what 
 to do with it, we should waste it in accusing 
 one another in the newspapers of being spies 
 and money-grubbers, we should frighten so- 
 ciety with the assurance that we have neither 
 men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! 
 Nothing! And to scare society as we are 
 doing now, and as we shall continue to do, 
 means to deprive it of courage; it means 
 simply to declare that we have no social or 
 political sense in us. And I also thought 
 that, before the dawn of a new life has bro- 
 ken, we shall turn into sinister old men and 
 women and we shall be the first who, in our 
 hatred of that dawn, will calumniate it. 
 [130] 
 
Mother never stops talking about pov-' 
 erty. It is very strange. In the first place, 
 it is strange that we are poor, beg like beg- 
 gars, and at the same time eat superbly, live 
 in a large house ; in the summer we go to our 
 own country house, and generally speaking 
 we do not look like beggars. Evidently 
 this is not poverty, but something else, and 
 rather worse. Secondly, it is strange that 
 for the last ten years mother has been spend- 
 ing all her energy solely on getting money 
 to pay interest. It seems to me that were 
 mother to spend that terrible energy on 
 something else, we could have twenty such 
 houses. Thirdly, it seems to me strange 
 that the hardest work in the family is done 
 by mother, not by me. To me that is the 
 strangest thing of all, most terrible. She 
 has, as she has just said, a thought on her 
 brain, she begs, she humiliates herself; our 
 debts grow daily and up till now I have not 
 done a single thing to help her. What can I 
 do*? I think and think and cannot make it 
 out. I only see clearly that we are rushing 
 down an inclined plane, but to what, the 
 devil knows. They say that poverty threat- 
 
 [131] 
 
ens us and that in poverty there is disgrace, 
 but that too I cannot understand, since I was 
 never poor. 
 
 The spiritual life of these women is as 
 gray and dull as their faces and dresses ; they 
 speak of science, literature, tendencies, and 
 the like, only because they are the wives and 
 sisters of scholars and literary men; were 
 they the wives and sisters of inspectors or of 
 dentists, they would speak with the same 
 zeal of fires or teeth. To allow them to 
 speak of science, which is foreign to them, 
 and to listen to them, is to flatter their igno- 
 rance. 
 
 Essentially all this is crude and meaning- 
 less, and romantic love appears as meaning- 
 less as an avalanche which involuntarily 
 rolls down a mountain and overwhelms peo- 
 ple. But when one listens to music, all this 
 is: that some people lie in their graves and 
 sleep, and that one woman is alive — gray- 
 haired, she is sitting in a box in the theatre, 
 quiet and majestic, and the avalanche seems 
 no longer meaningless, since in nature every- 
 thing has a meaning. And everything is 
 [132] 
 
forgiven, and it would be strange not to for- 
 give. 
 
 Olga Ivanovna regarded old chairs, stools, 
 sofas, with the same respectful tenderness as 
 she regarded old dogs and horses, and her 
 room, therefore, was something like an alms- 
 house for furniture. Round the mirror, on 
 all tables and shelves, stood photographs of 
 uninteresting, half -forgotten people; on the 
 walls hung pictures at which nobody ever 
 looked; and it was always dark in the room, 
 because there burnt there only one lamp with 
 a blue shade. 
 
 If you cry "Forward," you must without 
 fail explain in which direction one must go. 
 Do you not see that, if without explaining 
 the direction, you fire off this word simul- 
 taneously at a monk and at a revolutionary, 
 they will proceed in precisely opposite direc- 
 tions? 
 
 It is said in Holy Writ : "Fathers, do not 
 
 irritate your children," even the wicked and 
 
 good-for-nothing children; but the fathers 
 
 irritate me, irritate me terribly« My con- 
 
 [133I 
 
temporaries chime in with them and the 
 youngsters follow, and every minute they 
 strike me in the face with their smooth words. 
 
 That the aunt suffered and did not show 
 it gave him the impression of a trick. 
 
 O. I. was in constant motion ; such women, 
 like bees, carry about a fertilizing pollen. . . . 
 
 Don't marry a rich woman — she will drive 
 you out of the house; don't marry a poor 
 woman — you won't sleep; but marry the 
 freest freedom, the lot and life of a Cossack. 
 (Ukrainian saying.) 
 
 AliosHa: "I often hear people say: 'Before 
 marriage there is romance, and then — good- 
 bye, illusion!' How heartless and coarse 
 
 So long as a man likes the splashing of a 
 fish, he is a poet; but when he knows that 
 the splashing is nothing but the chase of the 
 weak by the strong, he is a thinker; but when 
 he does not understand what sense there is 
 in the chase, or what use in the equilibrium 
 [134] 
 
which results from destruction, he is becom- 
 ing silly and dull, as he was when a child. 
 And the more he knows and thinks, the sillier 
 he becomes. 
 
 The death of a child., I have no sooner 
 sat down in peace than — ^bang — fate lets fly 
 at me. 
 
 The she- wolf, nervous and anxious, fond 
 of her young, dragged away a foal into her 
 winter-shelter, thinking him a lamb. She 
 knew that there was a ewe there and that the 
 ewe had young. While she was dragging 
 the foal away, suddenly some one whistled; 
 she was alarmed and dropped him, but he 
 followed her. They arrived at the shelter. 
 He began to suck like the young wolves. 
 Throughout the winter he changed but little ; 
 he only grew thin and his legs longer, and 
 the spot on his forehead turned into a 
 triangle. The she-wolf was in delicate 
 health.^ 
 
 They invited celebrities to these evening 
 parties, and it was dull because there are few 
 
 1 A sketch of part of the story "Whitehead." 
 
 [135] 
 
people of talent in Moscow, and the same 
 singers and reciters performed at all evening 
 parties. 
 
 She has not before felt herself so free and 
 easy with a man. 
 
 You wait until you grow up and Fll teach 
 you declamation. 
 
 It seemed to her that at the show many of 
 the pictures were alike. 
 
 There filed up before you a whole line of 
 laundry-maids. 
 
 Kostya insisted that the women had 
 robbed themselves. 
 
 L. put himself in the place of the juryman 
 and interpreted it thus: if it was a case of 
 house-breaking, then there was no theft, be- 
 cause the laundresses themselves sold the 
 linen and spent the money on drink; but if 
 it was a case of theft, then there could have 
 been no house-breaking. 
 
 [136] 
 
Fiodor was flattered that his brother had 
 found him at the same table with a famous 
 actor. 
 
 When Y. spoke or ate, his beard moved 
 as if he had no teeth in his mouth. 
 
 Ivashin loved Nadya Vishnyevsky and 
 was afraid of his love. When the butler 
 told him that the old lady had just gone out, 
 but the young lady was at home, he fumbled 
 in his fur coat and dress-coat pocket, found 
 his card, and said: "Right." 
 
 But it was not all right. Driving from 
 his house in the morning, to pay a visit, he 
 thought that he was compelled to it by con- 
 ventions of society, which weighed heavily 
 upon him. But now it was clear to him that 
 he went to pay calls only because somewhere 
 far away in the depths of his soul, as under a 
 veil, there lay hidden a hope that he would 
 see Nadya. . . . And he suddenly felt piti- 
 ful, sad, and a little frightened. . . . 
 
 In his soul, it seemed to him, it was snow- 
 ing, and everything faded away. He was 
 afraid to love Nadya, because he was too old 
 [137] 
 
for her, thought his appearance unattractive, 
 and did not believe that young girls like 
 Nadya could love men for their minds and 
 spiritual qualities. Still there would at 
 times rise in him something like a hope. 
 But now, from the moment when the officer's 
 spurs jingled and then died away, there also 
 died away his timid love. . . . All was at 
 an end, hope was impossible. . . . "Yes, 
 now all is finished," he thought, "I am glad, 
 very glad." 
 
 He imagined his wife to be not Nadya, 
 but always, for some reason, a stout woman 
 with a large bosom, covered with Venetian 
 lace. 
 
 The clerks in the office of the Governor of 
 the island have a drunken headache. They 
 long for a drink. They have no money. 
 What is to be done? One of them, a con- 
 vict who is serving his time here for forgery, 
 devises a plan. He goes to the church, 
 where a former officer, now exiled for giving 
 his superior a box on the ears, sings in the 
 choir, and says to him panting: "Here! 
 
 [138] 
 
There's a pardon come for you ! They have 
 got a telegram in the office." 
 
 The late officer turns pale, trembles, and 
 can hardly walk for excitement. 
 
 "But for such news you ought to give 
 something for a drink," says the clerk. 
 
 "Take all I have! All I" 
 
 And he hands him some five roubles. . . . 
 He arrives at the office. The officer is afraid 
 that he may die from joy and presses his 
 hand to his heart. 
 
 "Where is the telegram?" 
 
 "The bookkeeper has put it away." (He 
 goes to the bookkeeper.) General laughter 
 and an invitation to drink with them. 
 
 "How terrible!" 
 
 After that the officer was ill for a week.^ 
 
 Fedya, the steward's brother-in-law, told 
 Ivanov that wild-duck were feeding on the 
 other side of the wood. He loaded his gun 
 with slugs. Suddenly a wolf appeared. 
 He fired and smashed both the wolf's hips. 
 The wolf was mad with pain and did not see 
 
 1 An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey- 
 in the island, Saghalien. 
 
 [139] 
 
him. "What can I do for you, dear?" He 
 thought and thought, and then went home 
 and called Peter. . . . Peter took a stick, 
 and with an awful grimace, began to beat 
 the wolf. . . . He beat and beat and beat 
 until it died. . . . He broke into a sweat 
 and went away, without saying a single 
 word. 
 
 Vera:: "I do not respect you, because you 
 married so strangely, because nothing came 
 of you. . . . That is why I have secrets 
 from you." 
 
 It is unfortunate that we try to solve the 
 simplest questions cleverly, and therefore 
 make them unusually complicated. We 
 should seek a simple solution. 
 
 There is no Monday which will not give 
 its place to Tuesday. 
 
 I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I 
 were born a second time and were asked: 
 "Do you want to marry?" I should answer : 
 "No." "Do you want to have money?" 
 "No., . /' 
 
 [140] 
 
Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in nov- 
 els, not ordinary persons. She loved the 
 chapters in which there is love, pure and 
 ideal not sensual. Descriptions of nature 
 she did not like. She preferred conversa- 
 tions to descriptions. While reading the 
 beginning she would glance impatiently at 
 the end. She did not remember the names 
 of authors. She wrote with a pencil in the 
 margins: "Wonderful!" "Beautiful!" or 
 "Serve him right!" 
 
 Lenstehka sang 'without opening her 
 mouth. 
 
 Post coitum : We Balderiovs , always ex- 
 celled in vigor and health. 
 
 He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his 
 son walking away, thought: "Perhaps, he 
 belongs to the race of men who will no longer 
 trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly 
 through the skies in balloons." 
 
 She is so beautiful that it is even fright- 
 ening; dark eye-brows. 
 
 [141I 
 
The son says nothing, but the wife feels 
 him to be an enemy; she feels that he has 
 overheard everything. . . . 
 
 What a lot of idiots there are among la- 
 dies. People get so used to it that they do 
 not notice it. 
 
 They often go to the theatre and read se- 
 rious magazines — and yet are spiteful and 
 immoral. 
 
 Nat: "I never have fits of hysterics. I 
 am not a pampered darling." ^ 
 
 Nat: (continually to her sisters): "O, 
 how ugly you have grown. O, how old you 
 do look!'' 
 
 To live one must have something to hang 
 on to. . . . In the provinces only the bodv 
 works, not the spirit. 
 
 You won't become a saint through other 
 people's sins. 
 
 ^This and the following few passages are from the 
 rough draft of Chekhov's play Three Sisters. 
 
 [142] 
 
Koulyguin: "I am a jolly fellow, I infect 
 every one with my mood.'' 
 
 KouL Gives lessons at rich houses. 
 
 Koul. In Act IV without mustaches. 
 
 The wife implores the husband: "Don't 
 get fat." 
 
 O if there were a life in which every one 
 grew younger and more beautiful. 
 
 Irene : *Tt is hard to live without a father, 
 without a mother." — "And without a hus- 
 band." — "Yes, without a husband. Whom 
 could one confide in*? To whom could one 
 complain? With -whom could one share 
 ones's joy*? One must love some one 
 strongly." 
 
 Koulyguin (to his wife) : "I am so happy 
 to be married to you, that I consider it un- 
 gentlemanly and improper to speak of or 
 even mention a dowry. Hush, don't say 
 anything. . . ." 
 
 [143] 
 
The doctor enjoys being at the duel. 
 
 It is difficult to live without orderlies. 
 You cannot make the servants answer your 
 bell. 
 
 The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, 
 and we leave at 12 sharp. ^ 
 
 In the daytime conversations about the 
 loose manners of the girls in secondary 
 schools, in the evening a lecture on degenera- 
 tion and the decline of everything, and at 
 night, after all this, one longs to shoot one- 
 self. 
 
 In the life of our towns there is no pessi- 
 mism, no Marxism, and no movements, but 
 there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity. 
 
 He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to 
 him to mean that he wanted a drink — ^and he 
 drank wine. 
 
 F. in the town-hall: Serguey Nik. in a 
 
 iHere the fragments from the rough draft of Three 
 Sisters end. 
 
 [144] 
 
plaintive voice: "Gentlemen, where can 
 we get the means'? Our town is poor." 
 
 To be idle involuntarily means to listen to 
 what is being said, to see what is being done; 
 but he who works and is occupied hears little 
 and sees little. 
 
 In the skating rink he raced after L. ; he 
 wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if 
 it were life which he wanted to overtake, 
 that life which one cannot bring back or 
 overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch 
 one's shadow. 
 
 Only one thought reconciled him to the 
 doctor: just as he had suffered from the doc- 
 tor's ignorance, so perhaps some one was suf- 
 fering from his mistakes. 
 
 But isn't it strange'? In the whole town 
 there is not a single musician, not a single or- 
 ator, not a prominent man. 
 
 Honorable Justice of the Peace, Honor- 
 able Member of the Children's Shelter— all 
 honorable. 
 
 [145] 
 
L. studied and stu3ied — ^but people who 
 had finished developing could not under- 
 stand her, nor could the young. Ut con^ 
 secutivum. 
 
 He is dark, with little side-whiskers, 
 dressed like a dandy, dark eyes, a warm bru- 
 net. He exterminates bugs, talks about earth- 
 quakes and China. His fiancee has a dowry 
 of 8,000 roubles; she is very handsome, as 
 her aunt says. He is an agent for a fire-in- 
 surance company, etc. "You're awfully 
 pretty, my darling, awfully. And 8,000 in- 
 to the bargain ! You are a beauty ; when I 
 looked at you to-day, a shiver ran down my 
 back." 
 
 He: Earthquakes are caused by the evapor- 
 ation of water. 
 
 Names: Goose, Pan, Oyster. 
 "Were I abroad, they would give mc a 
 medal for such a surname." 
 
 I can't be said to be handsome, but I am 
 rather pretty. 
 
 [146] 
 
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