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A story about a merchant and how an unexpected event changes his life for the worse, but in a way, for the better.
The mood of Gabriel Andersen is shattered by the appearance of soldiers who are there to punish the villagers for something. Andersen is a school teacher who writes poetry at night. But he observes three villagers shot to death, he does not like that. He distracts the soldiers so that the villagers would have a chance to get away. He stands as tall as his short body will let him and is shot to pieces.
Lazarus has just returned home after being dead for three days. Sumptuously dressed, he is surrounded by his sisters Mary and Martha, other relatives, and friends celebrating his resurrection. His three days in the grave have left marks on his body; there is a bluish cast to his fingertips and face, and there are cracked and oozing blisters on his skin. The deterioration of his body has been interrupted, but the restoration, his return to health, is incomplete. His demeanor, too, has changed. He is no longer joyous, carefree, and laughing, as he was before death. Now he is silent, neither laughing at the jokes of others nor offering such play himself. It is some time before those around him begin to notice these changes in him. No one asks him about his experience of death for a time. His friends and relatives are celebrating him as a symbol of life; their emphasis on his resurrection overshadows the other awful truth: His return to life has also made him their surest connection to death and its mysteries.
A young mother is completely enraptured with her young, precocious daughter.
Semyon is a veteran of the Russo-Turkish War who takes a job as a railroad track-walker, which means he lives with his family in a hut near railroad tracks and is responsible for maintaining a certain portion of the rails, including such things as clearing away snow in winter. His neighboring track-walker, Vasily, likewise lives in a hut, some six or seven miles away.
A month and two days had elapsed since the judges, amid the loud acclaim of the Athenian people, had pronounced the death sentence against the philosopher Socrates because he had sought to destroy faith in the gods. What the gadfly is to the horse Socrates was to Athens. The gadfly stings the horse in order to prevent it from dozing off and to keep it moving briskly on its course. The philosopher said to the people of Athens:
How you must stay on your feet. Hard work is a virtue, laziness is a curse. If you're relying on people for things you ought to be doing yourself, it might end up suffocating you.
