Eight Images and Ideas from Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books

A schoolboy treats a lady to dinner in a restaurant. He has only one rouble, twenty kopecks. The bill comes to four roubles thirty kopecks. He has no money and begins to cry. The proprietor boxes his ears. He was talking to the lady about Abyssinia.

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A man, who, to judge from his appearance, loves nothing but sausages and sauerkraut.

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Terrible poverty, desperate situation. The mother a widow, her daughter a very ugly girl. At last the mother takes courage and advises the daughter to go on the streets. She herself when young went on the streets without her husband’s knowledge in order to get money for her dresses; she has some experience. She instructs her daughter. The latter goes out, walks all night; not a single man takes her; she is ugly. A couple of days later, three young rascals on the boulevard take her. She brought home a note which turned out to be a lottery ticket no longer valid.

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Two wives: one in Petersburg, the other in Kertch. Constant rows, threats, telegrams. They nearly reduce him to suicide. At last he finds a way: he settles them both in the same house. They are perplexed, petrified; they grow silent and quiet down.

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An officer and his wife went to the baths together, and both were bathed by the orderly, whom they evidently did not consider a man.

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A government clerk gave his son a thrashing because he had only obtained five marks in all his subjects at school. It seemed to him not good enough. When he was told that he was in the wrong, that five is the highest mark obtainable, he thrashed his son again—out of vexation with himself.

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A very good man has such a face that people take him for a detective; he is suspected of having stolen shirt-studs.

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A serious phlegmatic doctor fell in love with a girl who danced very well, and, to please her, he started to learn a mazurka.

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—From Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books.