Contentment

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband's subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy. 'So then there's no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God, there's nothing to speak of,' she told herself. XXXIII A LEXEY A LEXANDROVITCH came back from the meeting of the ministers at four o'clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner-time (there were always a few people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into the drawing-room to receive these guests. Precisely at five o'clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch's life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. 'Unhasting and unresting,' was his motto. He came into the dining-hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife. 'Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn't believe how uncomfortable' (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable) 'it is to dine alone.' At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife's hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening either to the Princess Betsy Tverskoy, who, hearing of her return, had invited her, nor to the theatre, where she had a box for that evening. She did not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the sieve from Vassily and started sowing himself. 'Where did you stop?' Vassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Levin went forward, as best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as difficult as on a bog, and by the time Levin had ended the row he was in a great heat, and he stopped and gave up the sieve to Vassily. 'Well, master, when summer's here, mind you don't scold me for these rows,' said Vassily. 'Eh?' said Levin cheerily, already feeling the effect of his method. 'Why, you'll see in the summer-time. It'll look different. Look you where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my best, Konstantin Dmitritch, d'ye see, as I would for my own father. I don't like bad work myself, nor would I let another man do it. What's good for the master's good for us too. To look out yonder now,' said Vassily, pointing, 'it does one's heart good.' 'It's a lovely spring, Vassily.' 'Why, it's a spring such as the old men don't remember the like of. I was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about an acre of it. He was saying you wouldn't know it from rye.' 'Have you been sowing wheat long ?' 'Why, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave me two measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood.' 'Well, mind you crumble up the clods,' said Levin, going towards his house, 'and keep an eye on Mishka. And if there's a good crop you shall have half a rouble for every acre.' 'Humbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is.' Levin got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last year's clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring corn. The crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It had survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the broken stalks of last year's wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed ground. Over the ploughland riding was utterly impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in at each step. The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing. Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Levin rode back across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact get across, and started two ducks.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And it's true, as papa says, that when we were brought up there was one extreme—we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it's just the other way—the parents are in the wash-house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.' 'Well, what if they like it better?' Lvov said, with his beautiful smile, touching her hand. 'Anyone who didn't know you would think you were a stepmother, not a true mother.' 'No, extremes are not good in anything,' Natalie said serenely, putting his paper-knife straight in its proper place on the table. 'Well, come here, you perfect children,' Lvov said to the two handsome boys who came in, and after bowing to Levin, went up to their father, obviously wishing to ask him about something. Levin would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to their father, but Natalie began talking to him, and then Lvov's colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court uniform, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up without a break upon Herzegovina, Princess Korzinsky, the town council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksin. Levin even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it as he was going into the hall. 'Oh, Kitty told me to talk to you about Oblonsky,' he said, as Lvov was standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Levin off. 'Yes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-frères, to attack him,' he said, blushing. 'But why should I?' 'Well, then, I will attack him,' said Madame Lvov, with a smile, standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished speaking. 'Come, let us go.' V A T the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed. One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the music.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over everyone, and boiled away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness's gown. 'Well now, good-bye, or you'll never get washed, and I shall have on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a knife to his throat?' To be sure, and manage that your hand may be not far from his lips. He'll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,' answered Vronsky. 'So at the Français!' and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished. Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook hands and went off to his dressing-room. While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg. No money at all. His father said he wouldn't give him any and pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she'd taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had found a girl—he'd show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental style, 'genre of the slave Rebecca, don't you know.' He'd had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky's familiar stories in the familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he was used to. 'Impossible!' he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in 'which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. 'Impossible!' he cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. 'And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how's Buzulukov?' 'Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!' cried Petritsky. 'You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he's standing. . . . No, I say, do listen.' 'I am listening,' answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough towel. 'Up comes the Grand-Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets. The Grand-Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the ambassador.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over. Levin went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and spotted calf on to her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing, but when Levin put the calf close to her she was soothed, and sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her mother's udder, and stiffened her tail out straight. 'Here, bring the light, Fyodor, this way,' said Levin, examining the calf. 'Like the mother! though the colour takes after the father; but that's nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn't she splendid?' he said to the bailiff, quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in the calf. 'How could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after you left. You must settle with him, Konstantin Dmitritch,' said the bailiff. 'I did inform you about the machine.' This question was enough to take Levin back to all the details of his work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He went straight from the cowhouse to the counting-house, and after a little conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight upstairs to the drawing-room. XXVII T HE house was big and old fashioned, and Levin, though he lived alone, had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to his present new plans, but this house was a whole world to Levin. It was the world in which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just the life that to Levin seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family. Levin scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Levin stood still in the midst of the beehives and did not call him. He was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the influence of ordinary actual life, which had already depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show coolness to his brother, and to talk flippantly with Katavasov. 'Can it have been only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no trace?' he thought. But the same instant, going back to his mood, he felt with delight that something new and important had happened to him. Real life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was still untouched within him. Just as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing him and distracting his attention, prevented him from enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain his movements to avoid them, so had the petty cares that had swarmed about him from the moment he got into the trap, restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so long as he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite of the bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become aware of. XV ' D O you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch travelled on his way home?' said Dolly, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; 'with Vronsky! He's going to Servia.' 'And not alone; he's taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,' said Katavasov. 'That's the right thing for him,' said Levin. 'Are volunteers still going out then?' he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife getting a live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb. 'I should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!' said Katavasov, biting with a juicy sound into a cucumber. 'Well, what is one to make of it? For mercy's sake, do explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with,' asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had sprung up in Levin's absence. 'With the Turks,' Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout aspen leaf. 'But who has declared war on the Turks?—Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, assisted by Madame Stahl?' 'No one has declared war, but people sympathise with their neighbour's sufferings and are eager to help them,' said Sergey Ivanovitch. 'But the prince is not speaking of help,' said Levin, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, 'but of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the government.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She was perfectly composed and at ease. Dolly saw that she had now completely recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless tone which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which her deeper feelings and ideas were kept. 'Well, Anna, and how is your little girl?' asked Dolly. 'Annie?' (this was what she called her little daughter Anna). 'Very well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her? Come, I'll show her to you. We had a terrible bother,' she began telling her, 'over nurses. We had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so stupid! We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her, that we've gone on keeping her still.' 'But how have you managed? . . .' Dolly was beginning a question as to what name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown on Anna's face, she changed the drift of her question. 'How did you manage? have you weaned her yet?' But Anna had understood. 'You didn't mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname. Yes? That worries Alexey. She has no name—that is, she's a Karenin,' said Anna, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes meeting. 'But we'll talk about all that later,' her face suddenly brightening. 'Come, I'll show you her. Elle est très gentille. She crawls now.' In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in the whole house struck her still more. There were little go-carts ordered from England, and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a billiard-table, purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English, solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The room was large, and very light and lofty. When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock, was sitting in a little elbow-chair at the table, having her dinner of broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby was being fed, and the Russian nursery-maid was evidently sharing her meal. Neither the wet-nurse nor the head-nurse were there; they were in the next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in the queer French, which was their only means of communication. Hearing Anna's voice, a smart, tall English nurse with a disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door, hurriedly shaking her fair- curls, and immediately began to defend herself though Anna had not found fault with her. At every word Anna said the English nurse said hurriedly several times, 'Yes, my lady.' The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Darya Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with which she stared at the stranger.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Turovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the. billiard-room, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was talking with Vronsky near the door at the farther corner of the room. 'It's not that she's dull; but this undefined, this unsettled position,' Levin caught, and he was hurrying away, but Stepan Arkadyevitch called to him. 'Levin!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch; and Levin noticed that his eyes were not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always happened when he had been drinking, or when he was touched. Just now it was due to both causes. 'Levin, don't go,' he said, and he warmly squeezed his arm above the elbow, obviously not at all wishing to let him go. 'This is a true friend of mine—almost my greatest friend,' he said to Vronsky. 'You have become even closer and dearer to me. And I want you, and I know you ought, to be friends, and great friends, because you're both splendid fellows.' 'Well, there's nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends,' Vronsky said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his hand. Levin quickly took the offered hand, and pressed it warmly. 'I'm very, very glad,' said Levin. 'Waiter, a bottle of champagne,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'And I'm very glad,' said Vronsky. But in spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's desire, and their own desire, they had nothing to talk about, and both felt it. 'Do you know, he has never met Anna?' Stepan Arkadyevitch said to Vronsky. 'And I want above everything to take him to see her. Let us go, Levin!' 'Really?' said Vronsky. 'She will be very glad to see you. I should be going home at once,' he added, 'but I'm worried about Yashvin, and I want to stay on till he finishes.' 'Why, is he losing?' 'He keeps losing, and I'm the only friend that can restrain him.' 'Well, what do you say to pyramids? Levin, will you play? Capital!' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'Get the table ready,' he said to the marker. 'It has been ready for a long while,' answered the marker, who had already set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one about for his own diversion. 'Well, let us begin.' After the game Vronsky and Levin sat down at Gagin's table, and at Stepan Arkadyevitch's suggestion Levin took a hand in the game. Vronsky sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the 'infernal' to keep an eye on Yashvin. Levin was enjoying a delightful sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He was glad that all hostility was at an end with Vronsky, and the sense of peace, decorum, and comfort never left him. When the game was over, Stepan Arkadyevitch took Levin's arm. 'Well, let us go to Anna's, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I promised her long ago to bring you.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He was not put out of temper even by the sight of the peasants' horses and colts trampling down his young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and asked, 'Well, Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?' 'We must get the ploughing done first, Konstantin Dmitritch,' answered Ipat. The further he rode, the happier he became, and plans for the land rose to his mind each better than the last; to plant all his fields with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up into six fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle-yard at the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted. Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the labourers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the middle of the crop, and the winter-corn had been torn up by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the labourers were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth in the cart, with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the labourer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the labourers Levin seldom lost his temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told him to lead the horse to the hedge. 'It's all right, sir, it'll spring up again,' responded Vassily. 'Please don't argue,' said Levin, 'but do as you're told.' 'Yes, sir,' answered Vassily, and he took the horse's head. 'What a sowing, Konstantin Dmitrich,' he said, hesitating; 'first-rate. Only it's a work to get about! You drag a ton of earth on your shoes.' 'Why is it you have earth that's not sifted?' said Levin. 'Well, we crumble it up,' answered Vassily, taking up some seed and rolling the earth in his palms. Vassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The meeting had already begun. Round the cloth-covered table, at which Katavasov and Metrov seated themselves, there were some half-dozen persons, and one of these was bending close over a manuscript, reading something aloud. Levin sat down in one of the empty chairs that were standing round the table, and in a whisper asked a student sitting near what was being read. The student, eyeing Levin with displeasure, said— 'Biography.' Though Levin was not interested in the biography, he could not help listening, and learned some new and interesting facts about the life of the distinguished man of science. When the reader had finished, the chairman thanked him and read some verses of the poet Ment sent him on the jubilee, and said a few words by way of thanks to the poet. Then Katavasov in his loud, ringing voice read his address on the scientific labours of the man whose jubilee was being kept. When Katavasov had finished, Levin looked at his watch, saw it was past one, and thought that there would not be time before the concert to read Metrov his book, and indeed, he did not now care to do so. During the reading he had thought over their conversation. He saw distinctly now that though Metrov's ideas might perhaps have value, his own ideas had a value too, and their ideas could only be made clear and lead to something if each worked separately in his chosen path, and that nothing would be gained by putting their ideas together. And having made up his mind to refuse Metrov's invitation, Levin went up to him at the end of the meeting. Metrov introduced Levin to the chairman, with whom he was talking of the political news. Metrov told the chairman what he had already told Levin, and Levin made the same remarks on his news that he had already made that morning, but for the sake of variety he expressed also a new opinion which had only just struck him. After that the conversation turned again on the university question. As Levin had already heard it all, he made haste to tell Metrov that he was sorry he could not take advantage of his invitation, took leave, and drove to Lvov's. IV L vov , the husband of Natalie, Kitty's sister, had spent all his life in foreign capitals, where he had been educated, and had been in the diplomatic service.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'I think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp by putting it into the water,' said Levin. Then he recollected that this idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance and uttered as his own, came from a fable of Krilov's, and that the acquaintance had picked it up from a newspaper article. After driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Kitty in good spirits and quite well, Levin drove to the club. VII L EVIN reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were driving up as he arrived. Levin had not been at the club for a very long while—not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university and going into society. He remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, but he had completely forgotten the impres sion it had made on him in old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide semi-circular court and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps, and the hall-porter, adorned with a cross-way scarf, noiselessly opened the door to him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the porter's room the cloaks and goloshes of members who thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the easy, carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third porter at the top doors, a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the door without haste or delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in—Levin felt the old impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression of repose, comfort, and propriety. 'Your hat, please,' the porter said to Levin, who forgot the club rule to leave his hat in the porter's room. 'Long time since you've been. The prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch is not here yet.' The porter did not only know Levin, but also all his ties and relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends. Passing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit-buffet, Levin overtook an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining-room full of noise and people. He walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors. He saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some intimate friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter's room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life. Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky, Nevyedovsky and the old prince, and Vronsky and Sergey Ivanovitch. 'Ah! why are you late?' the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand over his own shoulder.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them. 'One has to know Anna and Vronsky—I have got to know him better now—to see how nice they are, and how touching,' she said, speaking now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced there. XXV V RONSKY and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the country, living in just the same conditions, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it. Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked for in some book, and show it him. The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed. But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife. When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as though forseeing their present relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting something from him. Towards the end of February it happened that Anna's baby daughter, who had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak. 'Who is here?' asked Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskoy,' the groom answered, and it seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned. During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer's eyes, and just now in the eyes of this groom. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his wife's health. The presence of Princess Iverskoy was unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the nursery.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'You don't say so!' 'And have you any children?' 'I've had four; I've two living—a boy and a girl. I weaned her last carnival.' 'How old is she?' 'Why, two years old.' 'Why did you nurse her so long?' 'It's our custom: for three fasts….' And the conversation became more interesting to Darya Alexandrovna. What sort of time did she have? What was the matter with the boy? Where was her husband? Did it often happen? Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant women, so interesting to her was their conversation, so completely identical were all their interests. What pleased her most of all was that she saw clearly what all the women admired more than anything was her having so many children, and such fine ones. The peasant women even made Darya Alexandrovna laugh, and offended the English governess, because she was the cause of the laughter she did not understand. One of the younger women kept staring at the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the rest and when she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain from the remark, 'My, she keeps putting on and putting on, and she'll never have done!' she said, and they all went off into roars. IX O N the drive home, as Darya Alexandrovna, with all her children round her, their heads still wet from their bathe, and a kerchief tied over her own head, was getting near the house, the coachman said, 'There's some gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I do believe.' Darya Alexandrovna peeped out in front, and was delighted when she recognised in the grey hat and grey coat the familiar figure of Levin walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any time, but at this moment she was specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No one was better able to appreciate her grandeur than Levin. Seeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of his day-dream of family life. 'You're like a hen with your chickens, Darya Alexandrovna.' 'Ah, how glad I am to see you!' she said, holding out her hand to him. 'Glad to see me, but you didn't let me know. My brother's staying with me. I got a note from Stiva that you were here.' 'From Stiva?' Darya Alexandrovna asked with surprise. 'Yes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow me to be of use to you,' said Levin, and as he said it he became suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence by the wagonette, snapping off the buds of the lime-trees and nibbling them. He was embarrassed through a sense that Darya Alexandrovna would be annoyed by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have come from her own husband. Darya Alexandrovna certainly did not like this little way of Stepan Arkadyevitch's of foisting his domestic duties on others.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  It was the very busiest working-time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labour, such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense labour were not so simple. To reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn—all this seems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia. Having lived the greater part of his life in the country and in the closest relations with the peasants, Levin always felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people. In the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and returning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the farm, where a new threshing-machine was to be set working to get ready the seed-corn. He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through the open door in which the dry bitter dust of the threshing whirled and played, at the grass of the threshing-floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in from the barn, then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the crevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark, dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts— 'Why is it all being done?' he thought. 'Why am I standing here, making them work?

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Exactly parallel variations occur in our consciousness of space. A road we walk back over, hoping to find at each step an object we have dropped, seems to us longer than when we walked over it the other way. A space we measure by pacing appears longer than one we traverse with no thought of its length. And in general an amount of space attended to in itself leaves with us more impression of spaciousness than one of which we only note the content.[543] I do not say that everything in these fluctuations of estimate can be accounted for by the time's content being crowded and interesting, or simple and tame. Both in the shortening of time by old age and in its lengthening by ennui some deeper cause may be at work. This cause can only be ascertained, if it exist, by finding out why we perceive time at all . To this inquiry let us, though without much hope, proceed. THE FEELING OF PAST TIME IS A PRESENT FEELING. If asked why we perceive the light of the sun, or the sound of an explosion, we reply, "Because certain outer forces, ether-waves or air-waves, smite upon the brain, awakening therein changes, to which the conscious perceptions, light and sound, respond." But we hasten to add that neither light nor sound copy or mirror the ether- or air-waves; they represent them only symbolically. The only case, says Helmholtz, in which such copying occurs, and in which "our perceptions can truly correspond with outer reality, is that of the time-succession of phenomena. Simultaneity, succession, and the regular return of simultaneity or succession, can obtain as well in sensations as in outer events. Events, like our perceptions of them, take place in time, so that the time-relations of the latter can furnish a true copy of those of the former. The sensation of the thunder follows the sensation of the lightning just as the sonorous convulsing of the air by the electric discharge reaches the observer's place later than that of the luminiferous ether."[544] One experiences an almost instinctive impulse, in pursuing such reflections as these, to follow them to a sort of crude speculative conclusion, and to think that he has at last got the mystery of cognition where, to use a vulgar phrase, 'the wool is short.' What more natural, we say, than that the sequences and durations of things should become known? The succession of the outer forces stamps itself as a like succession upon the brain.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  A certain man who lost every penny during our civil war went and actually rolled in the dust, saying he had not felt so free and happy since he was born. Once more, then, our self-feeling is in our power. As Carlyle says: "Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write, it is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." Neither threats nor pleadings can move a man unless they touch some one of his potential or actual selves. Only thus can we, as a rule, get a 'purchase' on another's will. The first care of diplomatists and monarchs and all who wish to rule or influence is, accordingly, to find out their victim's strongest principle of self-regard, so as to make that the fulcrum of all appeals. But if a man has given up those things which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as parts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic receipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all that was out of your own power,—then fortune's shocks might rain down unfelt. Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time solidifying our Self to make it invulnerable: "I must die; well, but must I die groaning too? I will speak what appears to be right, and if the despot says, then I will put you to death, I will reply, 'When did I ever tell you that I was immortal? You will do your part and I mine; it is yours to kill and mine to die intrepid; yours to banish, mine to depart untroubled.' How do we act in a voyage? We choose the pilot, the sailors, the hour. Afterwards comes a storm. What have I to care for? My part is performed. This matter belongs to the pilot. But the ship is sinking; what then have I to do? That which alone I can do—submit to being drowned without fear, without clamor or accusing of God, but as one who knows that what is born must likewise die."[264] This Stoic fashion, though efficacious and heroic enough in its place and time, is, it must be confessed, only possible as an habitual mood of the soul to narrow and unsympathetic characters. It proceeds altogether by exclusion. If I am a Stoic, the goods I cannot appropriate cease to be my goods, and the temptation lies very near to deny that they are goods at all. We find this mode of protecting the Self by exclusion and denial very common among people who are in other respects not Stoics. All narrow people intrench their Me, they retract it,—from the region of what they cannot securely possess.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The case of Lurancy Vennum is perhaps as extreme a case of 'possession' of the modern sort as one can find.[318] Lurancy was a young girl of fourteen, living with her parents at Watseka, Ill., who (after various distressing hysterical disorders and spontaneous trances, during which she was possessed by departed spirits of a more or less grotesque sort) finally declared herself to be animated by the spirit of Mary Roff (a neighbor's daughter, who had died in an insane asylum twelve years before) and insisted on being sent 'home' to Mr. Roff's house. After a week of 'homesickness' and importunity on her part, her parents agreed, and the Roffs, who pitied her, and who were spiritualists into the bargain, took her in. Once there, she seems to have convinced the family that their dead Mary had exchanged habitations with Lurancy. Lurancy was said to be temporarily in heaven, and Mary's spirit now controlled her organism, and lived again in her former earthly home. "The girl, now in her new home, seemed perfectly happy and content, knowing every person and everything that Mary knew when in her original body, twelve to twenty-five years ago, recognizing and calling by name those who were friends and neighbors of the family from 1852 to 1865, when Mary died, calling attention to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents that transpired during her natural life. During all the period of her sojourn at Mr. Roff's she had no knowledge of, and did not recognize, any of Mr. Vennum's family, their friends or neighbors, yet Mr. and Mrs. Vennum and their children visited her and Mr. Roff's people, she being introduced to them as to any strangers. After frequent visits, and hearing them often and favorably spoken of, she learned to love them as acquaintances, and visited them with Mrs. Roff three times. From day to day she appeared natural, easy, affable, and industrious, attending diligently and faithfully to her household duties, assisting in the general work of the family as a faithful, prudent daughter might be supposed to do, singing, reading, or conversing as opportunity offered, upon all matters of private or general interest to the family." The so-called Mary whilst at the Roffs' would sometimes 'go back to heaven,' and leave the body in a 'quiet trance,' i.e., without the original personality of Lurancy returning. After eight or nine weeks however, the memory and manner of Lurancy would sometimes partially, but not entirely, return for a few minutes. Once Lurancy seems to have taken full possession for a short time. At last, after some fourteen weeks, comformably to the prophecy which 'Mary' had made when she first assumed 'control,' she departed definitively and the Lurancy-consciousness came back for good. Mr. Roff writes: "She wanted me to take her home, which I did.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And it does seem here as if the fading process in the just-excited tract must combine with the process of the new impression to give to the latter a peculiar subjective tinge which should separate it from the impressions which the other objects give. But recognition of this immediate sort is beyond our power after a very short time has intervened. A couple of minutes' interval is generally fatal to it; so that it is impossible to conceive that our frequent instantaneous recognition of a face, e.g., as having been met before, takes place by any such simple process. Where we associate a head of classification with the object, the time-interval has much less effect. Dr. Lehmann could identify shades of gray much more successfully and permanently after mentally attaching names or numbers to them. Here it is the recall of the contiguous associate, the number or name, which brings about the recognition. Where an experience is complex, each element of the total object has had the other elements for its past contiguous associates. Each element thus tends to revive the other elements from within, at the same time that the outward object is making them revive from without. We have thus, whenever we meet a familiar object, that sense of expectation gratified which is so large a factor in our æsthetic emotions; and even were there no 'fringe of tendency' toward the arousal of extrinsic associates (which there certainly always is), still this intrinsic play of mutual association among the parts would give a character of ease to familiar percepts which would make of them a distinct subjective class. A process fills its old bed in a different way from that in which it makes a new bed. One can appeal to introspection for proof.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  One might put it otherwise by saying that "the mind can always intend, and know when it intends, to think of the Same. " This sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking. We saw in Chapter X how the consciousness of personal identity reposed on it, the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and intimacy which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now feels. This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some philosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together. It seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known object would perform exactly the same unifying function, even if the sense of subjective identity were lost. And without the intention to think of the same outer things over and over again, and the sense that we were doing so, our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us but a little way towards making a universe of our experience. Note, however, that we are in the first instance speaking of the sense of sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone, and not from the point of view of the universe. We are psychologizing, not philosophizing. That is, we do not care whether there be any real sameness in things or not, or whether the mind be true or false in its assumptions of it. Our principle only lays it down that the mind makes continual use of the notion of sameness, and if deprived of it, would have a different structure from what it has. In a word, the principle that the mind can mean the Same is true of its meanings , but not necessarily of aught besides.[384] The mind must conceive as possible that the Same should be before it, for our experience to be the sort of thing it is. Without the psychological sense of identity, sameness might rain down upon us from the outer world for ever and we be none the wiser. With the psychological sense, on the other hand, the outer world might be an unbroken flux, and yet we should perceive a repeated experience. Even now, the world may be a place in which the same thing never did and never will come twice. The thing we mean to point at may change from top to bottom and we be ignorant of the fact. But in our meaning itself we are not deceived; our intention is to think of the same.