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14 abroad it is mentioned from professorial chairs with the epithets "eminent and esteemed." It is reckoned among those fortunate names which to mention in vain or to abuse in public or in the Press is considered a mark of bad breeding. Indeed, it should be so; because with my name is inseparably associated the idea of a famous, richly gifted, and indubitably useful person. I am a steady worker, with the endurance of a camel, which is important. I am also endowed with talent, which is still more important. In passing, I would add that I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into letters or politics, never sought popularity in disputes with the ignorant, and made no speeches either at dinners or at my colleagues' funerals. Altogether there is not a single spot on my learned name, and it has nothing to complain of. It is fortunate.

The bearer of this name, that is myself, is a man of sixty-two, with a bald head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant and prepossessing, as I myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands tremble from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev's heroines, resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow and my back narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I smile my whole face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles. There is nothing imposing in my pitiable face, save that when I suffer from the tic, I have a