"The seminary of that time," he used to say to me, referring to that part of his life, "was not what it is now.

Nowadays the teachers talk about humanitarianism, and the boys would think that a crime had been committed against human dignity if one of them happened to be flogged.
But they don't consider that human dignity is at all affected by their getting drunk, and going to--to--to places that I never went to.

I was flogged often enough, and I don't think that I am a worse man on that account; and though I never heard then anything about pedagogical science that they talk so much about now, I'll read a bit of Latin yet with the best of them.
"When my studies were finished," said Batushka, continuing the simple story of his life, "the Bishop found a wife for me, and I succeeded her father, who was then an old man.

In that way I became a priest of Ivanofka, and have remained here ever since.

It is a hard life, for the parish is big, and my bit of land is not very fertile; but, praise be to God! I am healthy and strong, and get on well enough." "You said that the Bishop found a wife for you," I remarked.