"But for such news you ought to give something for a drink," says the clerk. "Take all I have! All!" And he hands him some five roubles.... He arrives at the office. The officer is afraid that he may die from joy and presses his hand to his heart. "Where is the telegram?" "The bookkeeper has put it away." (He goes to the bookkeeper.) General laughter and an invitation to drink with them. "How terrible!" After that the officer was ill for a week.[1] [Footnote 1: An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey in the island, Saghalien.] * * * * * Fedya, the steward's brother-in-law, told Ivanov that wild-duck were feeding on the other side of the wood. He loaded his gun with slugs. Suddenly a wolf appeared. He fired and smashed both the wolf's hips. The wolf was mad with pain and did not see him. "What can I do for you, dear?" He thought and thought, and then went home and called Peter.... Peter took a stick, and with an awful grimace, began to beat the wolf.... He beat and beat and beat until it died.... He broke into a sweat and went away, without saying a single word. * * * * * _Vera_: "I do not respect you, because you married so strangely, because nothing came of you.... That is why I have secrets from you." * * * * * It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution. * * * * * There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday. * * * * * I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I were born a second time and were asked: "Do you want to marry?" I should answer: "No." "Do you want to have money?" "No...." * * * * * Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in novels, not ordinary persons. She loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual. Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors. She wrote with a pencil in the margins: "Wonderful!" "Beautiful!" or "Serve him right!" * * * * * Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth. * * * * * _Post coitum_: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health. * * * * * He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought: "Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons." * * * * * She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows. * * * * * The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels that he has overheard everything....