Gelett Burgess

“ It's only this that worries me—you're a woman, and I fear you've not yet killed that woman's heart of yours. You must kill that heart, Nomé, before you leave this room tonight. You may think you have given yourself to the Movement, body and soul; you may not have had a thought outside this matter since you first came to us, but you're a woman still—I could tell that by the way you kissed little Ospovat. A woman may often do bigger things than a man, but she often does littler things, too. You've done with the woman's battle of the heart against the brain. ”

“ In no other city in the world is it so easy as in San Francisco, that quaint rendezvous of saloons and cigar stands. There the goddess Fortuna has a shrine on every street corner and the offerings of her devotees produce a rattle as characteristic of the town as the slap of the cable pulley in the conduit of the car lines. The cigar slot-machine or “hard-luck-box” is a nickel lottery played by good and bad alike; for it has a reputation no shadier than the church-raffle or the juvenile grab-bag, and is tolerated as a harmless safety-valve for the lust of gaming. ”

“ Lying in the brush, Georges wondered whether it would all end as before. As before, each man waited for his time to come; but now, seasoned, hopeful, he could joke at death.
“There’s a marmite for you!” a corporal would sing out, as a German shell came screaming to the right; and, as the shrapnel exploded, “Look out for the prunes!” a man would yell, “they’re coming your way!” Georges was taking it all coolly enough, thinking, he told me, how much those hurtling shells sounded like a subway train rolling into a station—rather more like an express traveling past without stopping. ”

“ PUPPY GOOPS
Candy in the cushions
Of the easy-chair;
Raisins in the sofa—
How did they get there?
The little Goop who's greedy
Does it every day,
Like a little puppy,
Hiding bones away!
EXAGGERATION
Don't try to tell a story
To beat the one you've heard;
For if you try, you're apt to lie,
And that would be absurd!
Don't try to be more funny
Than any one in school;
For if you're not, they'll laugh a lot,
And think you are a fool!
NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!
Do you slam the door?
Do you drag your feet?
Making noise enough for four
Hundred thousand Goops, or more,
Tearing up the street? ”

“ How little I know of life, of human nature—almost as little, Madame Spiritan, as I know of myself. How much I long to know!—and how little, little time I have in which to learn!"
Madame Spiritan took both Nomé's hands in hers, and the tears were in her eyes. "You are very young, dear," she answered. "Indeed, you have much to learn. I am a woman—do you think I enjoy my hypocrisy? ”

“ Then the Princess Pittipums peered out of the window of the great House of Annum, and far down below upon the earth she beheld a million little children in their little beds, and their stockings, and all—dreaming of Santa Claus. "It really is too bad," she said; "but the fact is, the 25th is my birthday, and I want to keep it out of the Year, so that I may never grow any older!"
Then all the Maiden Months cried, and Father Time cried, "But no one grows older on Christmas day; indeed, every one grows younger!" ”

“ It is much like bathing in champagne for the first time; one doesn’t know whether one will be drunk, or drowned. One is aware only of the expense. So Angie struggled, and was struggled at . . . until a red table cloth was thrown over her head, and she was intoxified by love. Then all was dark—as dark as the inside of a lead pencil.
Angie was dreaming she was being kissed by Lloyd George, when she was awakened by a fly philandering across her upper lip. She was alone in a circus tent with her captor and the fly. ”

“ Our business tonight is to shock the whole world—to bring the land to its senses, if it has any—to compel men to gaze at a great evil, that it may, in time, be righted. By means of what men call a crime we shall force the recognition and discussion of what is, in the eyes of God, a far greater crime, the enslavement of a whole people. Ours is a war, and we employ the methods of warfare. Some believe that the general condition of mankind must needs improve slowly, laboriously, painfully, inch by inch, like the motion of a screw. ”

“ I have a giant in me that is stronger than this pigmy of Love who so torments me. Though I thrill as the sap to spring, I would think, not feel. There is another Order, greater than this disorder in my heart, and I would bear it witness. Believe in me, comrades, as you have believed before, trust me, and let me go to eternal peace!"
She sat down, quivering with the passion of her grief, and let her face fall in her hands. O'Brien, mercurial, susceptible as ever to her fascinating, intense temperament, pushed up to her and laid his great hairy hand upon her shoulder. ”

“ I will leave as soon as possible!" she exclaimed.
"You cannot leave yet. Let Lady Felvex be your friend, instead of me."
"I am a hypocrite in her house. I can't bear that."
"You need no excuses. You saved my life. That is enough."
"Let me think. I had thought that I had finished with thinking, but I must begin again. So I thought I had finished with feeling, and I felt again. Never mind. Some time, Lord Felvex, you may know what I have suffered. Should that time come, you may forgive me." ”

“ The square was still again.
As Nomé waited there, revolver in hand, her mind was full of the advice Mangus had given her. His phrase—the ratchet and the screw—came back to her like a watchword. But the intellectual stigma he had put upon her sex still aroused her scornful resentment. She would prove its injustice. She thought of women whose example might inspire her—and she thought, too, of some whose hearts had triumphed over their heads, in the supreme trial. ”

“ DO you begin to see, now, what Sadie meant by style in kindness? Style is what a smart hat has, isn’t it? It’s what an expensive motor car has—or a beautiful dancer. It’s the perfect technique of any artist—a successful clergyman, or a good novelist, or a clever burglar such as Mr. Raffles. In short, style is a combination of good taste and imagination. Then what is style in giving? To give what you’d like yourself may be kindness. But the Educated Heart isn’t quite satisfied even with the Golden Rule. ”

“ We end by being bored at their attitudes and poses.
The Sulphite has the true Gothic spirit; the Bromide, the impulse of the classic. One wonders, relishing the impossible, manifesting himself in characteristic, spontaneous ways; the other delights in rule and rhythm, in ordered sequences, in authority and precedent, following the law. One carves the gargoyle and ogrillion, working in paths untrod, the other limits himself to harmonic ratios, balanced compositions, and to predestined fenestration. One has a grim, naif, virile humor, the other a dead, even beauty. One is hot, the other cold. ”

“ Occasionally I take trips to New York for new ideas, and then I outwork the most inveterate shopper or bargain hunter. I almost eat up the stores in my anxiety to find something new. It may be only a new neck-piece, or a way of running elevators, or it may be an innovation in system, a new method of arranging stock and selling it. This is my hardest work of all.
My eyes get positively tired with watching things. Any one who has walked all day up and down the aisles of a department store knows the jaded feeling that comes, the blur to the eyes, and the buzzing in the ears. ”

“ Myrtle's cheeks were in a fine glow with the exercise, and she bent forward, holding her hat on with one hand. As she looked up at him from under her brows, Alden caught her flashing smile, all her own now, for he could not think of Fincko with this expression of sauvagerie. Some women in the open air are really at one with nature, he thought, but others belong indoors. ”

“ The capture of Bounder would inevitably compromise her, and the hue-and-cry would surely set the fashionable districts of London by the ears. She was doubtless betrayed at Soho Square long before this, and Fate must soon overtake her who had mocked high and low.
"Tim," Mrs. Stencill said, finally, "we must rescue her. It would be a shame to let such a spirit languish here, even were she to escape from the clutches of the law. What an American she would make! What a wife for some nice man!"
"What a wife, indeed!" mused Mortimer. "A man with nerve and sentiment might tame her, if he lived." ”

“ The thought of Mrs. Higgins brought him back to his old torture. He felt as though she were always round the next corner.
He had almost reached East Street, when he yielded to his qualms and bolted into the warmth and light of the Bowsprit Saloon to drown his forebodings in two schooners of steam beer. So disappeared Coffee John’s luck-dime, and with it the stimulating effects of his exordium. Vango’s short glow of comfort was, however, but a respite, for shortly after midnight the bar closed, and he was sent forth again into the perilous night. ”

“ Take the pistol, for God's sake, and say that you did it!"
There were cries from below, and footsteps were heard running down the hall. Nomé turned deathly pale and ill. Must it always end this way, the man strong and determined, the woman weak and undecided? Little Ospovat had beaten her at the end. Why could she not have risen to his height?
No—but one thing she could do! Ospovat's courage had illumined her at last. It would do no good, but it would be what a man would do, at least. She put the revolver quickly, passionately, to her heart and fired. ”

“ How can I ever face myself till I have proved myself worthy of this sacrifice? How can I now prefer my own personal happiness to the good of the Cause? I must trust to your judgment that no other victim will serve, but I beg you to try me. ”

“ As if he were a Martian newly come to earth, he sees things separated from their environment, tradition, precedent—the dowager without her money, the politician without his power, the sage without his poverty; he sees men and women for himself. He prefers his own observation to any _a priori_ theories of society. He knows how to work, but he knows, too (what the Bromide does never) , how to play, and he plays with men and women for the joy of life, and his own particular game. ”