I have friends among the honourable company of station-masters

Those officials, so cruelly maligned, are, generally speaking, peaceable men, obliging by nature, of sociable disposition, modest in their ambitions, and not too grasping. Much that is interesting and instructive my be gathered from their conversation, which the travellers do wrong to despise. As for myself, I confess I prefer their talk to that of some important official travelling on government business.

It is not difficult to guess that I have friends among the honourable company of stationmasters. In fact, the memory of one of them is precious to me. Circumstances drew us together once, and it is of him I now want to tell my kind readers.

in The Stationmaster de Alexander Pushkin