N., when a group is being photographed, always stands in the front row; on addresses he always signs the first; at anniversaries he is always the first to speak. Always wonders: "O soup! O pastries!"
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Z. got tired of having visitors, and he hired a French woman to live in his house as if she were his mistress. This shocked the ladies and he no longer had visitors.
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Z. is a torch-bearer at funerals. He is an idealist. "In the undertaker's shop."
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N. and Z. are intimate friends, but when they meet in society, they at once make fun of one another—out of shyness.
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Complaint: "My son Stepan was delicate, and I therefore sent him to school in the Crimea, but there he was caned with a vine-branch, and that gave him philoxera in the behind and now the doctors can not cure him."
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