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WICKER SOFA : sofa, chairs to match and two pots of geraniums in the windows, which were, however, never cleaned--and were dingy with the dust of years. The inn had other advantages: the blacksmith's was close by, the wicker sofa was just at hand; and, lastly, one could get a good meal in it, thanks to the cook, a fat and red-faced peasant woman, who prepared rich and appetizing dishes and dealt out provisions without stint; the nearest tavern was reckoned not half a mile away; the host kept snuff which though mixed with wood-ash, was extremely pungent and pleasantly irritated the nose; in fact there were many reasons why visitors of all sorts were never lacking in that inn. It was liked by those who used it--and that is the chief thing; without which nothing, wicker sofa course,
WICKER SOFA : would succeed and it was liked principally as it was said in the district, because the host himself was very fortunate and successful in all his undertakings, though he did not much deserve his wicker sofa fortune; but it seems if a man is lucky, he is lucky. The innkeeper was a man of the working class called Naum Ivanov. He was a man of middle height with broad, stooping shoulders; he had a big round head and curly hair already grey, though he did not look more than forty; a full and fresh face, a low but white and smooth forehead and little bright blue eyes, out of which he looked in a very queer way from under his wicker sofa and yet with an insolent expression, a combination not often met with. He always held his head down and
WICKER SOFA : seemed to turn it with difficulty, perhaps because his neck was very short. He walked at a trot and did not swing his arms, wicker sofa slowly moved them with his fists clenched as he walked. When he smiled, and he smiled often without laughing, as it were smiling to himself, his thick lips parted unpleasantly and displayed a row of close-set, brilliant teeth. He spoke jerkily and with a surly note in his voice. He shaved his beard, but dressed in Russian wicker sofa His costume consisted of a long, always threadbare, full coat, full breeches and shoes on his bare feet. He was often away from home on business and he had a great deal of business--he was a horse-dealer, he rented land, had a market garden, bought up orchards and traded in various ways--but
WICKER SOFA : his absences never lasted long; like wicker sofa kite, to which he had considerable resemblance, especially in the expression of his eyes, he used to return to his nest. He knew how to keep that nest in order. He was everywhere, he listened to everything and gave orders, served out stores, sent things out and made up his accounts himself, and never knocked off wicker sofa farthing from anyone's account, but never asked more than his due. The visitors did not talk to him, and, indeed, he did not care to waste words. "I want your money and you want my victuals," he used to say, as it were, jerking out each word: "We have not met for a christening; the traveller has eaten, has fed his beasts, no need to sit on. If he is tired, let him sleep without chattering." The
WICKER SOFA : labourers he kept wicker sofa healthy grown-up men, but docile and well broken in; they were very much afraid of him. He never touched intoxicating liquor and he used to give his men ten kopecks for vodka on the great holidays; they did not dare to drink on other days. People like Naum quickly get rich ... but to the magnificent position in which he found himself--and he was believed to be worth forty or fifty thousand roubles--Naum Ivanov had not arrived by the strait path.... The inn had existed on the same spot on the high road twenty years before the time from which we date the beginning of our story. It is true that it had not then the dark red shingle wicker sofa which made Naum Ivanov's inn look like a gentleman's house; it was inferior in
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