* * * * *

Z. got tired of having visitors, and he hired a French woman to live
in his house as if she were his mistress. This shocked the ladies and
he no longer had visitors.

* * * * *

Z. is a torch-bearer at funerals. He is an idealist. "In the
undertaker's shop."

* * * * *

N. and Z. are intimate friends, but when they meet in society, they at
once make fun of one another--out of shyness.

* * * * *

Complaint: "My son Stepan was delicate, and I therefore sent him to
school in the Crimea, but there he was caned with a vine-branch, and
that gave him philoxera in the behind and now the doctors can not cure
him."

* * * * *

Mitya and Katya were told that their papa blasted rocks in the quarry.
They wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so they took a pound of
powder from their father's room, put it in a bottle, inserted a wick,
and placed it under their grandfather's chair, when he was dozing
after dinner; but soldiers marched by with the band playing--and this