Thoma Grigorovich had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day of his death, he never liked to tell the same thing twice. There were times, when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognize it. Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for us simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are scribblers, or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the usurers at our yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovich, and he completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom I have mentioned, and one of whose tales you have already read, I think, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, shows it to us. Thoma Grigorovich was on the point of setting his spectacles astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind thread about them, and stick them together with wax, so he passed it over to me. As I understand something about reading and writing, and do not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it. I had not turned two leaves, when all at once he caught me by the hand, and stopped me. “Stop! tell me first what you are reading.” I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question. “What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovich? These were your very words.” “Who told you that they were my words?” “Why, what more would you have? Here it is printed: _Related by such and such a sacristan_.” “Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a Moscow pedlar! Did I say that? _’Twas just the same as though one hadn’t his wits about him!_ Listen, I’ll tell it to you on the spot.” We moved up to the table, and he began. * * * * * My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten rolls and makovniki[4] with honey in the other world!) could tell a story wonderfully well. When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn’t stir from the spot all day, but keep on listening. He was no match for the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap, and flee from the house. As I now recall it, my old mother was alive then, in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now. [4] Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in square cakes.