"Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt" by Nikolai Gogol

He always sat placidly, his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the teacher, and he never hung scraps of paper on the back of the comrade in front of him, never carved on the bench or played squash your granny before the teacher came.

This terrible teacher, who always had two bundles of birch switches on the lectern and half his auditors on their knees, made Ivan Fyodorovich his monitor, though there were many in the class of much greater ability.

He was approaching fifteen when he passed into the second class, where, instead of the short catechism and the four rules of arithmetic, he started on the full-length one, the book on the duties of man, and fractions.

The majority of the officers drank vymorozki and knew how to pull Jews by their sidelocks no worse than the hussars; several of them even danced the mazurka, and the colonel of the P— regiment never missed an opportunity of mentioning it when talking with someone in society.

For that, in a short time, eleven years after being made ensign, he was promoted to sub-lieutenant.

At last Ivan Fyodorovich was discharged with the rank of sub-lieutenant, hired a Jew for forty roubles to take him from Mogilev to Gadyach, and sat himself in the kibitka just at the time when the trees became clothed in young, still sparse leaves, all the earth greened brightly with fresh green, and all the fields smelled of spring.

During that time, he would open his suitcase, take out his linen, examine it well to see if it was properly laundered, properly folded, would carefully remove a piece of fluff from the new uniform, already made without epaulettes, and would put it all back in the best way.

So a townsman goes to his club every day, not in order to hear anything new there, but to meet those friends with whom from time immemorial he has been used to chatting in the club.

So an official takes great pleasure in reading the directory several times a day, not for the sake of any diplomatic undertakings, but because he delights exceedingly in seeing names in print.

Even by the look of him, he seemed to be one of those people who never rack their brains over trifles and whose whole life goes swimmingly.

“What is this? What?” and Grigory Grigorievich’s voice was imperceptibly becoming more and more menacing.

“By God, sir, I can’t...I’ve already had occasion...” Ivan Fyodorovich said, faltering.

What do you say about these medical men, my dear sir? I think they simply fool and befuddle us. Some old woman knows twenty times better than all these medical men.

It will do no harm if I say that generally he was not lavish with words. Maybe the reason was his timidity, or maybe it was the wish to express himself more beautifully.

The drunken miller, who had been good for absolutely nothing at all, she managed, through her own manly pulling of his topknot every day, without any extraneous remedies, to turn not into a man but into pure gold.

...she stood over the mowers all the while they worked; she knew the exact number of melons and watermelons in her patch; she took a toll of five kopecks per cart from those passing over her dam; she climbed the trees to shake down the pears; she gave beatings to her vassals with her terrible hand, and with the same awesome hand offered a glass of vodka to the deserving.

The result was that Ivan Fyodorovich’s little estate, which, according to the latest census, consisted of eighteen souls, flourished in the full sense of the word.

Besides, she loved her nephew all too ardently and carefully saved every kopeck for him.

It seemed as if nature had created him precisely for managing an eighteen-soul estate. The aunt herself noticed that he was going to make a good proprietor, though, all the same, she did not yet allow him to enter into all branches of management.

However, he was constantly present in the fields beside the reapers and mowers, and this brought inexplicable delight to his meek soul.

...how everything comes alive then: the steppe turns red and blue and glows with flowers; quails, bustards, gulls, grasshoppers, thousands of insects, and from them comes whistling, buzzing, chirring, crying, and suddenly a harmonious chorus; and it's all never silent for a moment!

Even before you came into the world, I must tell you, he started visiting your mother—true, at times when your father wasn’t home. Not that I say it in reproach of her! God rest her soul!—though the dear departed was always unfair to me.

But, just between us, your late mother was of a most whimsical character. The devil himself, Lord forgive me the vile word, wouldn’t have been able to understand her.

Her serf girls make excellent rugs.

Out of deference, he stopped his cart by the barn and went on foot to the porch.

However, even this outfit seemed to burden his corpulent girth, because he was sweating profusely.

At the same time a little old lady came in, short, a veritable coffee pot in a bonnet, with two young ladies, one fair and one dark.

Ivan Fyodorovich, being a well-bred cavalier, went up to kiss the old lady’s hand first, and then the hands of the two young ladies.

“You shouldn’t have taken the pope’s nose, Ivan Fyodorovich! It’s a turkey!” said the little old lady, addressing Ivan Fyodorovich, who at that moment was being offered a platter by a rustic waiter in a gray tailcoat with a black patch.

“Hm, what sort of turkey is this?” Ivan Ivanovich said in a low voice, with a disdainful look, turning to his neighbor.

Ivan Fyodorovich, hearing that the matter concerned a book, began assiduously serving himself sauce.

Even the young ladies began to talk; but the fair one, who seemed six years younger than her sister and looked as if she was about twenty-five, was more taciturn.

Finally, in the evening, Ivan Fyodorovich managed with great difficulty to say good-bye; and, despite his tractability and their attempts to force him to stay the night, he held to his intention to leave, and left.

Often, while cooking some pastry, which she generally never entrusted to the cook, she would forget herself and, imagining a little grandson standing by her and asking for cake, would absentmindedly hold out the best piece to him in her hand, while the yard dog, taking advantage of it, would snatch the tasty morsel and bring her out of her reverie with his loud chomping, for which he would always get beaten with the poker.

Suffice it to say that Vasilisa Kashporovna was very pleased with its architecture and always expressed regret over old vehicles becoming outmoded.

The muzhiks who happened along their way, seeing such a rich vehicle (the aunt rarely drove out in it), stopped respectfully, doffed their hats, and made low bows.

The aunt approached with majestic step, put one leg forward with great adroitness...

Ivan Fyodorovich sat on his chair as if on needles, blushing and looking down; but the young lady seemed not to notice it at all and sat indifferently on the sofa, studying the windows and walls diligently or following with her eyes a cat that timorously ran under the chairs.

He turns to her, but the aunt is no longer an aunt but a belfry. And he feels that someone is pulling him on a rope up the belfry.

As soon as he got up in the morning, he at once appealed to the fortune-telling book, at the end of which one virtuous bookseller, in his rare kindness and disinterestedness, had placed an abbreviated interpretation of dreams.