Book: Tomato juice

An hour conversation with Lydia Lvovna was replaced a year at the University, in terms of encyclopedic knowledge and was invaluable from the point of view of knowledge of life. Self-esteem competed in it only with the gravity of nature and merciless sarcasm.
In addition, Lydia Lvovna has always been a source of food, sometimes money and a little more - good cognac. She understood and believed this dues not painful painful, besides loved grandson, and she knew how to love. This, by the way, not all can afford it. I'm afraid. Grandma Lida was not afraid of anything. Proud, independent, with great taste and impeccable manners, with manicured hands, modest but expensive jewelry, it is still an example for me of what should be a woman at any age.

At the time of our meeting she was eighty, the same age, so to speak Oct, despised this the most Oct all my heart, but considered it beneath my dignity and intelligence to deal with it. She was no aristocrat aristocratic roots, although the proletariat, and the peasantry of her family tree bypassed. The veins in places bore the marks of Moses, what Lydia L. said: "any decent person should be Jewish blood, but no more than bread in the chops." She was in good health and so sane that some of it was caused by class hatred.

Lydia Lvovna taught to all to apply to You, especially to the younger and the staff. I remember her lecture:
Someday you will have a driver. So, always, I repeat ALWAYS, be on You, even if he is the same age as yours and works for you for ten years. "You" - this armor, this miserable Russian that they could hide from a boorishness and rudeness reality around them.
Platinum word.