Anecdotes from the Life of Pushkin

    1. Pushkin was a poet and was always writing something. Once
 Zhukovsky caught him at his writing and exclaimed loudly: -- You're
 not half a scribbler! 
    From then on Pushkin was very fond of Zhukovsky and started to call
 him simply Zhukov out of friendship.

    2. As we know, Pushkin's beard never grew. Pushkin was very
 distressed about this and he always envied Zakharin in who, on the
 contrary, grew a perfectly respectable beard. 'His grows, but mine
 doesn't' -- Pushkin would often say, pointing at Zakharin with his
 fingernails. And every time he was right.

    3. Once Petrushevsky broke his watch and sent for Pushkin. Pushkin
 arrived, had a look at Petrushevsky's watch and put it back on the
 chair. 'What do you say then, Pushkin old mate?' -- asked
 Petrushevsky. 'It's a stop-watch' -- said Pushkin.

    4. When Pushkin broke his legs, he started to go about on wheels.
 His friends used to enjoy teasing Pushkin and grabbing him by his
 wheels. Pushkin took this very badly and wrote abusive verses about
 his friends. He called these verses 'erpigarms'.

    5. The summer of 1829 Pushkin spent in the country. He used to get
 up early in the morning, drink a jug of fresh milk and run to the
 river to bathe. Having bathed in the river, Pushkin would lie down on
 the grass and sleep until dinner. After dinner Pushkin would sleep in
 a hammock. If he met any stinking peasants, Pushkin would nod at them
 and squeeze his nose with his fingers. And the stinking peasants would
 scratch their caps and say: 'It don't matter'.

    6. Pushkin liked to throw stones. If he saw stones, then he would
 start throwing them. Sometimes he would fly into such a temper that he
 would stand there, red in the face, waving his arms and throwing
 stones. It really was rather awful!

    7. Pushkin had four sons and they were all idiots. One of them
 couldn't even sit on his chair and kept falling off. Pushkin himself
 was not very good at sitting on his chair either, to speak of it. It
 used to be quite hilarious: they would be sitting at the table; at one
 end Pushkin would keep falling off his chair, and at the other end --
 his son. One wouldn't know where to look.