Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 13

On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage--people driving to ma.s.s.

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.

Dinner at Count O.D.'s. Fat lazy footmen; 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 d.a.m.ned 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is proud to think that his work is so troublesome; he does not drink and often sends articles to medical journals that do not publish them.

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 uninteresting 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-existent, and she lavished that love upon her husband. And after her death footsteps could be heard in her house.

They are members of a temperance society and now and again take a gla.s.s 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." 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 writing for a long time, with his air of importance 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 coa.r.s.e 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!"

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 is not in the least infectious or dangerous.