Complete Works of Anton Chekhov

School guardian. Widowed priest plays the harmonium and sings: “Rest with the saints.”

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In July the red bird sings the whole morning.

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“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.”

[Footnote 1: Cigs in Russian is a kind of fish.]

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A bride to an engineer: a dynamite cartridge filled with one-hundred-rouble notes.

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“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.)

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The idle, so-called governing, classes cannot remain long without war. When there 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 possible 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 imagination, and the common misfortune unites all.

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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.

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An old maid writes a treatise: “The tramline of piety.”

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Ryzeborsky, Tovbin, Gremoukhin, Koptin.

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She had not sufficient skin on her face; in order to open her eyes she had to shut her mouth and vice versa.

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When she raises her skirt and shows her lace petticoat, it is obvious that she dresses like a woman who is accustomed to be seen by men.

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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.

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A girl, flirting, chatters: “All are afraid of me … men, and the wind … all 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.

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A restaurant. An advanced conversation Andrey Andreyevitch, a good-natured bourgeois, 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 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 estate; 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 forest, 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.

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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. I 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.

[Footnote 1: Shtopov means “cork-screw.”]

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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. X complains to the authorities, worries every one, seeks redress and so on; he dies from irritation and worry.

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A governess is teased with the nickname Gesticulation.

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Shaptcherigin, Zambisebulsky, Sveentchutka, Chemburaklya.

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Senile pomposity, senile vindictiveness. What a number of despicable old men I have known!

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How delightful when on a bright frosty morning a new sleigh with a rug comes to the door.

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