"Stop, stop! where are you going ?" Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went skipping all about the cottage--you may laugh, but it was no laughing matter to our grandfathers.

And in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the village with holy water, and chase the Devil through all the streets with his brush.

My late grandfather's aunt long complained that, as soon as it was dark, some one came knocking at her door and scratching at the wall.
Well! All appears to be quiet now in the place where our village stands; but it was not so very long ago--my father was still alive--that I remember how a good man could not pass the ruined tavern which a dishonest race had long managed for their own interest.

From the smoke-blackened chimneys smoke poured out in a pillar, and rising high in the air, rolled off like a cap, scattering burning coals over the steppe; and Satan (the son of a dog should not be mentioned) sobbed so pitifully in his lair that the startled ravens rose in flocks from the neighbouring oak-wood and flew through the air with wild cries.
THE CLOAK In the department of--but it is better not to mention the department.
There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.

Each individual attached to them nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person.
Quite recently a complaint was received from a justice of the peace, in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance in which the justice of the peace is made to appear about once every ten lines, and sometimes in a drunken condition.