From Novostroefka came Spiridon, the only tailor within reach who could make clothes for gentlemen. As a man, Spiridon was sober, laborious, and capable, not devoid of imagination and a certain plastic sense; as a tailor he was beneath contempt. His lack of faith spoiled everything. From fear that his suits were not in the latest fashion, he took them to pieces as often as five times; he tramped miles into town to study the local fops; yet despite all his strivings, we were dressed in clothes which even a caricaturist would find pretentious and exaggerated. We spent our youth in such impossibly tight trousers and such short coats that the presence of girls always made us blush.
Spiridon spared no pains in measuring me. He measured me vertically and horizontally, as if he were about to hoop a barrel; he noted the details with a fat pencil; adorned his note-book with triangular signs; and, having done with me, seized hold of my tutor, Yegor Alekseievitch Pobiedimsky. My unforgotten tutor was then at the age when sprouting moustaches are a serious question and clothes are a problem of gravity, so you may imagine Spiridon's sacred terror as he began his measurements. He forced Pobiedimsky to throw back his head and spread his legs in an inverted V, to raise his arms on high, and again to lower them. Spiridon measured him again and again, marching round him as a love-sick dove round its mate; and then fell
