"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV

VOLUME 5

THE WIFE AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT




CONTENTS


The Wife
Difficult People
The Grasshopper
A Dreary Story
The Privy Councillor
The Man in Case
Gooseberries
About Love
The Lottery Ticket



THE WIFE

I

I RECEIVED the following letter:

"DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH!

"Not far from you -- that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo
-- very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which
I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that
village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off
for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there,
and have come back. Here, of course, they have nothing now;
everything belongs to other people. They have settled three or
four families in a hut, so that there are no less than fifteen
persons of both sexes in each hut, not counting the young
children; and the long and the short of it is, there is nothing
to eat. There is famine and there is a terrible pestilence of
hunger, or spotted, typhus; literally every one is stricken. The