"I ADMIT I have had a drop. . . . You must excuse me. I went into a beer shop on the way here, and as it was so hot had a couple of ...

THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some Mada...

IN spite of a violent attack of gout in the night and the nervous exhaustion left by it, Kistunov went in the morning to his office and b...

A STILL August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up by t...

BETWEEN eight and nine o'clock in the morning. A dark leaden-coloured mass is creeping over the sky towards the sun. Red zigzags of l...

FINE carriage with rubber tyres, a fat coachman, and velvet on the seats, rolled up to the house of a landowner called Gryabov. Fyodor And...

Two young people who had not long been married were walking up and down the platform of a little country station. His arm was round her w...

BEFORE setting off for his examination in Greek, Vanya kissed all the holy images. His stomach felt as though it were upside down; there ...

THE police superintendent Otchumyelov is walking across the market square wearing a new overcoat and carrying a parcel under his arm. A r...

ILYA SERGEITCH PEPLOV and his wife Kleopatra Petrovna were standing at the door, listening greedily. On the other side in the little draw...

WHO goes there?" No answer. The watchman sees nothing, but through the roar of the wind and the trees distinctly hears someone walki...

THE Justice of the Peace, who had received a letter from Petersburg, had set the news going that the owner of Yefremovo, Count Vladimir I...

PAPA and mamma and Aunt Nadya are not at home. They have gone to a christening party at the house of that old officer who rides on a litt...

IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little station on one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay or a dull ...

"VOLODYA'S come!" someone shouted in the yard. "Master Volodya's here!" bawled Natalya the cook, running into...

A PIANO-TUNER called Murkin, a close-shaven man with a yellow face, with a nose stained with snuff, and cotton-wool in his ears, came out...

I IT was ten o'clock in the evening and the full moon was shining over the garden. In the Shumins' house an evening service celeb...

BIG raindrops were pattering on the dark windows. It was one of those disgusting summer holiday rains which, when they have begun, last a ...

IVAN YEGORITCH KRASNYHIN, a fourth-rate journalist, returns home late at night, grave and careworn, with a peculiar air of concentration....

"SOMEONE came from the Grigoryevs' to fetch a book, but I said you were not at home. The postman brought the newspaper and two le...