Part 28 (2/2)

The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, and we leave at 12 sharp.[1]

[Footnote 1: Here the fragments from the rough draft of _Three Sisters_ end.]

In the daytime conversations about the loose manners of the girls in secondary schools, in the evening a lecture on degeneration and the decline of everything, and at night, after all this, one longs to shoot oneself.

In the life of our towns there is no pessimism, no Marxism, and no movements, but there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity.

He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to him to mean that he wanted a drink--and he drank wine.

F. in the town-hall: Serguey Nik. in a plaintive voice: ”Gentlemen, where can we get the means? Our town is poor.”

To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he who works and is occupied hears little and sees little.

In the skating rink he raced after L.; he wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if it were life which he wanted to overtake, that life which one cannot bring back or overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch one's shadow.

Only one thought reconciled him to the doctor: just as he had suffered from the doctor's ignorance, so perhaps some one was suffering from his mistakes.

But isn't it strange? In the whole town there is not a single musician, not a single orator, not a prominent man.

Honorable Justice of the Peace, Honorable Member of the Children's Shelter--all honorable.

L. studied and studied--but people who had finished developing could not understand her, nor could the young. _Ut consecutivum_.

<script>