The humour of Russia

by Unknown

INTRODUCTION BY

STEPNIAK

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

PAUL FRÉNZENY

LONDON WALTER SCOTT

1895 LTD

CONTENTS

	PAGE
Marriage—Gogol	[1]
At the Police Inspector’s—Gorbounòv	[64]
Before the Justice of the Peace—Gorbounòv	[69]
Incompatibility of Temper—A. N. Ostròvsky	[72]
A Madman’s Diary—Gogol	[107]
Porridge—Nikolai Uspènsky	[135]
A Domestic Picture—A. N. Ostròvsky	[142]
“La Traviata”—Gorbounòv	[167]
A Seventeenth Century Letter from Ems—Gorbounòv	[170]
The Village Schoolmaster—N. Uspènsky	[174]
The Recollections of Onésime Chenapan—“Shchedrìn”	[185]
The Crocodile—Fèdor Dostoyèvsky	[205]
The Steam-Chicken—Glyeb Uspènsky	[236]
The Story of a Kopeck—S. Stepniak	[254]
The Dog’s Passport	[273]
A Trifling Defect in the Mechanism—Glyeb Uspènsky	[276]
The Self-Sacrificing Rabbit—“Shchedrìn”	[309]
Choir Practice—V. A. Slyeptzòv	[317]
The Eagle as Mecænas—“Shchedrìn”	[335]

INTRODUCTION.

Of all manifestations of literary genius humour is the rarest, and I am not sure that it is not the highest. Laughter is immortal. The sentimental novels over which our grandfathers and grandmothers shed floods of tears—the “Corinnas,” the “Clarissas,” and the “New Heloises”—have become for us soporifics of an almost irresistible strength. But the world still laughs, and will laugh for ever, over the masterpiece of Cervantes and the burlesques of Voltaire. Who nowadays can read from beginning to end Francesco Petrarca, and who can put down Giovanni Boccaccio when once begun?