nd she tries to find an exceptional wife for him. Those around
her suffer. 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 moments of pleasant emotion and
makes the request: "Write a letter to my auntie in Briansk; she is a
darling...."

* * * * *

There is a bad smell in the barn: ten years ago haymakers slept the
night in it and ever since it smells.

* * * * *

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 roubles 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 favorite 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 superstition, 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 special committee is appointed to work
out the 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 timber; the
caterpillar pest.

* * * * *

X.: "Choleraic disorder in my stomach started with the cider."

* * * * *

Of some writers each work taken separately is brilliant