Page 1550 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘Clearly I’ve been napping, and they’ve overlooked
me,’ Stepan Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he
began keeping his eyes and ears open, and towards the end
of the winter he had discovered a very good berth and had

formed a plan of attack upon it, at first from Moscow
through aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the
matter was well advanced, in the spring, he went himself
to Petersburg. It was one of those snug, lucrative berths of
which there are so many more nowadays than there used
to be, with incomes ranging from one thousand to fifty
thousand roubles. It was the post of secretary of the
committee of the amalgamated agency of the southern
railways, and of certain banking companies. This position,
like all such appointments, called for such immense energy
and such varied qualifications, that it was difficult for them
to be found united in any one man. And since a man
combining all the qualifications was not to be found, it
was at least better that the post be filled by an honest than
by a dishonest man. And Stepan Arkadyevitch was not
merely an honest man—unemphatically—in the common
acceptation of the words, he was an honest man—
emphatically—in that special sense which the word has in
Moscow, when they talk of an ‘honest’ politician, an
‘honest’ writer, an ‘honest’ newspaper, an ‘honest’

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