e wife,
my uterine brother-in-law, etc.

* * * * *

To Doctor N., an illegitimate child, who has never lived with his
father and knew him very little, his bosom friend Z., says with
agitation: "You see, the fact of the matter is that your father misses
you very much, he is ill and wants to have a look at you." The father
keeps "Switzerland," furnished apartments. He takes the fried fish out
of the dish with his hands and only afterwards uses a fork. The vodka
smells rank. N. went, looked about him, had dinner--his only feeling
that that fat peasant, with the grizzled beard, should sell such
filth. But once, when passing the house at midnight, he looked in at
the window: his father was sitting with bent back reading a book. He
recognized himself and his own manners.

* * * * *

As stupid as a gray gelding.

* * * * *

They teased the girl with castor oil, and therefore she did not marry.

* * * * *

N. all his life used to write abusive letters to famous singers,
actors, and authors: "You think, you scamp,..."--without signing his
name.

* * * * *

When the man who carried the torch at funerals came out in his
three-cornered hat, his frock coat with laces and stripes, she fell in
love with him.

* * * * *

A sparkling, joyous nature, a kind of living protest against
grumblers; he is fat and healthy, eats a great deal, every one likes
him but only because they are afraid of the grumblers; he is a nobody,
a Ham, only eats and laughs loud, and that's all; when he dies, every
one sees that he had done nothing, that they had mistaken him for some
one else.

* * * * *

After the inspection of the building, the Commission, which was
bribed, lunched heartily, and it was precisely a funeral feast over
honesty.

* * * * *

He who tells lies is dirty.

* * * * *

At three o'clock in the morning they wake him: he has to go to his job
at the railway station, and so every day for the last fourteen years.

* * * * *

A lady grumbles: "I write to my son that he should change his linen
every Saturday. He replies: 'Why Saturday, not Monday?' I answer:
'Well, all right, let it be Monday.' And he: 'Why Monday