For a play: an old woman of radical views dresses like a girl, smokes, cannot exist without 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.
* * * * *
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 properly," 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 seventeen. 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 overwhelmed 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 comfortable. 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 something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, 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.
* * * * *
(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 family. The father, an official who played the piano, got to hate him, took him into a corner of the garden, flogged him with considerable 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."
Z: "Will you also call at the chemist's and get me some naphthaline?"
N: (alarmed) "I'll forget the naphthaline, 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 uncomfortable, 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 the earth a thousand years hence. "Do you remember that white tree?"
* * * * *
Anakhthema!
* * * * *
Zigzagovsky, Oslizin, Svintchulka, Derbaliguin.
* * * * *
A woman with money, the money hidden everywhere, in her bosom and between her legs….
* * * * *
All that procedure.
* * * * *
Treat your dismissal as you would an atmospheric 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, 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 seventeen. He took her to live in Berlin. At forty she became a widow and by that time spoke Russian badly and German badly.
* * * * *
The husband and wife loved having visitors, because, when there were no visitors they quarreled.
* * * * *
It is an absurdity! It is an anachronism!
* * * * *
"Shut the window! You are perspiring! Put on an overcoat! Put on goloshes!"
* * * * *
If you wish to have little spare time, do nothing.
* * * * *
On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage—people driving to mass.
* * * * *
For the first time in her life a man kissed her hand; it was too much for her, it turned her head.
* * * * *
What wonderful names: the little tears of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.[1]
[Footnote 1: The names of flowers.]
* * * * *
A government forest officer with shoulder straps, who has never seen a forest.
* * * * *
A gentleman owns a villa near Mentone; he bought it out of the proceeds of the sale of his estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkhov to which he had come on business; he gambled away the villa at cards and became a railway clerk; after that he died.
* * * * *
At supper he noticed a pretty woman and choked; a little later he caught sight of another pretty woman and choked again, so that he did not eat his supper—there were a lot of pretty women.
* * * * *
A doctor, recently qualified, supervises the food in a restaurant. "The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor." He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him—and all is well.
* * * * *
He did not eat, he partook of food.
* * * * *
A man, married to an actress, during a performance of a play in which his wife was acting, sat in a box, with beaming face, and from time to time got up and bowed to the audience.