is always away visiting; there
are no readers.

* * * * *

Life seems great, enormous, and yet one sits on one's _piatachok_.[1]

[Footnote 1: The word means five kopecks and also a pig's snout.]

* * * * *

Zolotonosha?[1] There is no such town! No!

[Footnote 1: The name of a Russian town, meaning literally
"Gold-carrier."]

* * * * *

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 before 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 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.[1]

[Footnote 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.]

* * * * *

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.