Five Scenes from Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books

* * * * *

Daughter: “Felt boots are not the correct thing.”

Father: “Yes they are clumsy, I’ll have to get leather ones.” The father fell ill and his deportation to Siberia was postponed.

Daughter: “You are not at all ill, father. Look, you have your coat and boots on….”

Father: “I long to be exiled to Siberia. One could sit somewhere by the Yenissey or Obi river and fish, and on the ferry there would be nice little convicts, emigrants…. Here I hate everything: this lilac tree in front of the window, these gravel paths….”

* * * * *

A bedroom. The light of the moon shines so brightly through the window that even the buttons on his night shirt are visible.

* * * * *

A nice man would feel ashamed even before a dog….

* * * * *

A certain Councillor of State, looking at a beautiful landscape, said:
“What a marvelous function of nature!” From the note-book of an old
dog: “People don’t eat slops and bones which the cooks throw away.
Fools!”

* * * * *

He had nothing in his soul except recollections of his schooldays.

* * * * *

–From Anton Chekhov’s Note-Books.

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