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, but taken as a whole they are indefinite; of others each particular work represents nothing outstanding; but, for all that, taken as a whole they are distinct and brilliant. * * * * * N. rings at the door of an actress; he is nervous, his heart beats, at the critical moment he gets into a panic and runs away; the maid opens the door and sees nobody. He returns, rings again--but has not the courage to go in. In the end the porter comes out and gives him a thrashing. * * * * * A gentle quiet schoolmistress secretly beats her pupils, because she believes in the good of corporal punishment. * * * * * N.: "Not only the dog, but even the horses howled." * * * * * N. marries. His mother and sister see a great many faults in his wife; they are distressed, and only after four or five years realize that she is just like themselves. * * * * * The wife cried. The husband took her by the shoulders and shook her, and she stopped crying. * * * * *