Поиск по творчеству и критике
Cлово "QUARREL"
Входимость: 1. Размер: 24кб.
Входимость: 1. Размер: 19кб.
Входимость: 1. Размер: 162кб.
Примерный текст на первых найденных страницах
Входимость: 1. Размер: 24кб.
Часть текста: Semyon Ivanov was a sick, broken-down man. He had been in the war nine years before, serving all through the campaign as an officer's servant. He had known hunger, and cold, and blazing heat, and had made twenty-five and thirty-five mile marches in heat and cold, rain and shine. He had been under fire, too, but no bullet, thank God, had got him. His regiment had once been in the firing line, and there had been skirmishing with the Turks for a whole week. Our men had lain on this side of a glen, the Turks on the other, and there had been a steady cross-fire from morning till evening. Semyon's officer was there too; three times a day Semyon brought him his meals and a boiling samovar from the regimental kitchen in the ravine. He carried the samovar through a clearing, and the bullets whizzed around him and smacked against the rocks. Semyon was terrified, and sometimes he cried, but he kept straight on. The officers were pleased with him, because they always had hot tea. He came home from the war unharmed, but his legs and arms began to ache. He fell on evil days. Coming home, he found that his old father had died; his four-year-old son had died, too, from some throat trouble. Semyon was left all alone in the world with his wife. They could not work the farm; ploughing...
Входимость: 1. Размер: 19кб.
Часть текста: It was a very handsome building, supported by slender twisted columns, upon which rested light decorative arches webbed with iron window frames. The greenhouse looked its best in the evening in the red glare of the sunset. It was all aglow then, shot with shifting gleams, like a huge sparkling gem with small-cut facets. Through the thick transparent glass one could see the imprisoned plants. Vast though the greenhouse was, they were cramped in it. The tangled roots fought one another for moisture and nutrition. The branches of the trees were entwined with the huge leaves of the palms, which they bent and broke, themselves pressing up against the iron frames and bending and breaking in turn. The gardeners were constantly lopping the branches and tying the leaves up with wire to curb their wild growth, but it did not help much. What the plants needed was the wide free spaces of their native habitats. They were natives of hot climes, tender, luxurious creations, who remembered their native countries and yearned for them. However transparent the glass roof might be, it was not the bright sky. Sometimes, in the winter, the panes froze over, and then it would grow quite dark in the greenhouse. The wind would howl and beat against the frames, and rattle them. Snow-drifts covered the roof. Listening to the howling of the wind, the plants would remember another wind, a warm humid wind that gave to them life and health. And they longed to feel its breath upon them again, to have it sway their branches and wanton with their leaves. But the air in the greenhouse was...
Входимость: 1. Размер: 162кб.
Часть текста: sake of gossiping and blackening people long since dead and defending themselves against accusations long since forgotten. I have none of these reasons. I am still a young man, who has not made history nor seen it made; I have no reason to blacken people, and no reason whatever to defend myself. To recapture past happiness? It was so short-lived and the end so frightful, that the memory of it is anything but pleasant. Why then does a secret voice whisper it into my ear, why, when I wake up in the night, do familiar scenes and visions pass before me in the darkness, and why, when one pale image rises before me, do my face flame and my hands clench, and terror and rage clutch at my throat, as they did that day when I stood face to face with my mortal enemy? I cannot rid myself of these haunting memories, and an odd thought has occurred to me. Perhaps, if I put them down on paper, I shall be finished with them; perhaps they will haunt me no longer, and will let me die in peace. That is the special reason that makes me take up my pen. Perhaps someone will read this diary, perhaps not. It is immaterial to me. Therefore, I need not apologize to my future readers either for my choice of subject, which cannot have the slightest interest for people accustomed to dealing with social, if not world, problems, or for the form in which my writings are set forth. True, I should like these lines to be read by one person, but that person will not blame me. Everything that has to do with me is dear to her. That person is my cousin. What is keeping her so long today? It is...