TMoP, Chap 1, Page 1, Paragraph 1

[David Payne]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Richard Ryan (richardryannyc at yahoo.com) wrote:

> "October, 1869.  A droshky passes slowly down a street in the Haymarket district of St Petersburg.  Before a tall tenement building the driver reins in his horse."

It's very visual and starts so passively (e.g., "A droshky passes" -- no driver?; "a street" rather than "the street"); you have to assume that "the driver" in sentence 2 was driving the droshky in sentence 1 (like the act of mentally connecting the images in two panels of comic strip). I googled the beginning of the first sentence (A droshky passes slowly down a street) and the fifth hit was text from from The Possessed (!):

"At last a slow brooding smile came on to his lips. He slowly sat down, put his elbows ..... And only fancy, as I flew here in a racing droshky I saw Mavriky ..." 

(Ellipses added by Google; see: See: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRC_enUS207US208&q=A+droshky+passes+slowly+down+a+street)

Set these side-by-side, both such passive, detached images and beautiful sounding when read out loud:
* "a slow brooding smile came on to his lips"
* "A droshky passes slowly down a street"

Note that The Possessed alternates between third and first person points of view.
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