exists whom the proverb has described as "men unto themselves, neither
this nor that--neither Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village."
And to that class we had better assign also Manilov. Outwardly he was
presentable enough, for his features were not wanting in amiability,
but that amiability was a quality into which there entered too much of
the sugary element, so that his every gesture, his every attitude,
seemed to connote an excess of eagerness to curry favour and cultivate
a closer acquaintance. On first speaking to the man, his ingratiating
smile, his flaxen hair, and his blue eyes would lead one to say, "What
a pleasant, good-tempered fellow he seems!" yet during the next moment
or two one would feel inclined to say nothing at all, and, during the
third moment, only to say, "The devil alone knows what he is!" And
should, thereafter, one not hasten to depart, one would inevitably
become overpowered with the deadly sense of ennui which comes of the
intuition that nothing in the least interesting is to be looked for,
but only a series of wearisome utterances of the kind which are apt to
fall from the lips of a man whose hobby has once been touched upon.
For every man HAS his hobby. One man's may be sporting dogs; another
man's may be that of believing himself to be a lover of music, and
able to sound the art to its inmost depths; another's may be that of
posing as a connoisseur of recherche cookery; another's may be that of
aspiring to play roles of a kind higher than nature has assigned him;
another's (though this is a more limited ambition) may be that of
getting drunk, and of dreaming that he is edifying both his friends,
his acquaintances, and people with whom he has no connection at all by
walking arm-in-arm with an Imperial aide-de-camp; another's may be
that of possessing a hand able to chip corners off aces and deuces of
diamonds; another's may be that of yearning to set things straight--in
other words, to approximate his personality to that of a stationmaster
or a director of posts. In short, almost every man has his hobby or