hall meet....

Missyuss, where are you?

TYPHUS

In a smoking-compartment of the mail-train from Petrograd to Moscow sat
a young lieutenant, Klimov by name. Opposite him sat an elderly man with
a clean-shaven, shipmaster's face, to all appearances a well-to-do Finn
or Swede, who all through the journey smoked a pipe and talked round and
round the same subject.

"Ha! you are an officer! My brother is also an officer, but he is a
sailor. He is a sailor and is stationed at Kronstadt. Why are you going
to Moscow?"

"I am stationed there."

"Ha! Are you married?"

"No. I live with my aunt and sister."

"My brother is also an officer, but he is married and has a wife and
three children. Ha!"

The Finn looked surprised at something, smiled broadly and fatuously as
he exclaimed, "Ha," and every now and then blew through the stem of his
pipe. Klimov, who was feeling rather unwell, and not at all inclined to
answer questions, hated him with all his heart. He thought how good it
would be to snatch his gurgling pipe out of his hands and throw it under
the seat and to order the Finn himself into another car.

"They are awful people, these Finns and ... Greeks," he thought.
"Useless, good-for-nothing, disgusting people. They only cumber the
earth. What is the good of them?"

And the thought of Finns and Greeks filled him with a kind of nausea. He
tried to compare them with the French and the Italians, but the idea of
those races somehow roused in him the notion of organ-grinders, naked
women, and the foreign oleographs which hung over the chest of drawers
in his aunt's house.

The young officer felt generally out of sorts. There seemed to be no
room for his arms and legs, though he had the whole seat to himself; his
mouth was dry and sticky, his head was heavy and his clouded thoughts
seemed to wander at random, not only in his head, but also outside it
among the seats and the people looming in the darkness. Through the
turmoil in his brain, as through a dream, he heard the murmur of
voices, the rattle of the wheels, the slamming of doors. Bells,
whistles, conductors, the tramp of the people on the platforms came
oftener than usual. The time slipped by quickly, imperceptibly, and it
seemed that the train stopped every minute at a station as now and then
there would come up the sound of metallic voices:

"Is the post ready?"

"Ready."

It seemed to him that the stove-neater came in too often to look at t