Jesse Lynch Williams

“ Once upon a time a certain old graduate found himself in the midst of a beautiful college campus. On all sides he beheld old beloved scenes and well-remembered landmarks; but also he discovered new haunts, new places, unfamiliar and somehow unwelcome to him. And about him, as he stood there gazing, came and went many of the same recognizable types of lovable undergraduate humanity; and yet here in the crowd strolled one sort and over there across the way stood another sort that seemed strange and unexpected. ”

“ Away up-town, far from the noise of Newspaper Row, far up, nearly to the end of the green park, where the streets are clean and asphalted, and so quiet that horses' feet make a pleasant patter, where there is bright blue sky and sunshine and open, clear spaciousness, with clean-capped nurse-maids wheeling baby-carriages along by the park-wall, where the sparrows twitter—away up there lived a girl that Linton liked to talk to when he was thinking of giving up human nature. ”

“ Cross these tracks and you are beyond the city, in the suburbs, as much as the lateral edges of this city can have suburbs; yet this is only the distance of a long golf-hole from residences and urbanity. Here are stock-yards with squealing pigs, awful smells, deep, black mire, and then a long dock reaching far out into the Hudson, with lazy river barges flopping along-side it, and dock-rats fishing off the end—a hot, hateful walk if ever your business or pleasure calls you out there of a summer afternoon. There the typical up-town cross street ends its dreary existence. ”

“ But if I sold myself, as you are forcing poor little Jean to do, to a libertine she does not love, who does not love her—that is not sin! That is respectability! To urge and aid her to entrap a man into marriage by playing the shameless tricks of the only trade men want women to learn—that is holy matrimony. But to give yourself of your own free will to the man you love and trust and can help, the man who loves and needs and has won the right to have you—oh, if this is sin, then let me live and die a sinner! ”

“ For more than its just share of the best of brains are drawn into the feeders of this great noisy, all-devouring machine that turns out the stuff called news. It is a fascinating machine, and has a way of getting more than its share of good blood also. It is a relentless machine, and is apt to squeeze the best out of strong men, throwing them forth again, when least expected, old and useless before they reach what should be the prime of life.
Occasionally you hear of a well-known correspondent who signs his initials, or of an editor who wins fame or else notoriety. ”

“ If your home sweet home is a flat sweet flat, perched well above adjacent roofs and turned broadside to the south, it will be flooded with more sunshine than any country place I have yet seen—not in half the rooms at a time, but in nearly all of them all the time, from sunrise to sunset, without even the bare branches of trees to interfere in the least with this glorious germ-destroying element so important to health in winter. One cannot have too much sunshine in the home, and, as intimated above, to live in a house is not compulsory in the city as in the country. ”

“ But it is no more to be described than the face of Tinker Bell, the fairy in the piece who appears only as a ray of dancing light. You can't put your finger down on any one quality, such as whimsicality, humor, satire, or fancy, and say that here is the most characteristic Barrie, for just when you think you've got him, he's off and laughing at you, dancing and playing around you and your idea, as Tinker Bell flashed about the Darling's nursery.
There are some things about Barrie that one could wish were otherwise. His art is at times too persistently artless. ”

“ Success doesn't need it? I have an idea it is a more available asset for success than it ever can be for failure. Sympathy alone does failure very little good, but it is sympathy only, good-will, approbation, that success really needs in its business as much as other sorts of growth need sunshine. Without it, moreover, what is the use of making the business so successful? If our friends aren't going to share the fun of it with us—if we aren't going to have any friends—where should we find any real success in success? ”

“ But The Walk Up-town, as such, lies straight up Broadway, between the substantial old Astor House, the last large hotel remaining down-town, and the huge, obtrusive post-office building, as hideous as a badly tied bundle, but which leads us on because we know—or, if strangers, because we do not know—that when once we get beyond it we shall see the calm, unstrenuous beauty of the City Hall with its grateful lack of height, in its restful bit of park. ”

“ There are so many different sorts of men in this strange business, hurrying up and down and in and out of the big, teeming town and through the country and over the globe, gathering the history of to-day (while you are absorbed by your own more or less important part in it) , printing it to-night while you sleep, and handing it to you, for a ridiculous price, fresh and inky-smelling, as soon as you awake in the morning. More varieties of mankind perhaps than in any of the other arts of peace, and they come from more parts of the world apd more strata of society. ”

“ Now the many feet of the Freshman column began to rumble. On they plunged, increasing their speed every second.
The spectators on either side sprang back. On came the Sophomores with still more momentum, showing a front row of hardened football men with football suits. A distant light shone on them and Young had a vivid glimpse of their determined faces.
Then, with the Juniors crying, "Come faster! come faster! stick together!" and the Seniors who coached the Sophomores shouting, "Rush 'em, rush 'em, rush 'em!" ”

“ John
See the example he sets to society—I honor him for it.
Judge
Fine! but that doesn't seem to restore Mary's radiant health, Theodore's brilliant youth.
Lucy
Ah, but they have their children—think how they adore those beautiful children!
Judge
No, don't think how they adore them, think how they rear those beautiful children—in the streets; one little daughter dead from contagion; one son going to the devil from other things picked up in the street! If marriage is a social institution, look at it socially. Why, a marriage like mine is worth a dozen like theirs—to Society. ”

“ But to be tucked away in a snug little flat near the towering top of a tall apartment house on a quiet cross street, looking serenely down upon the teeming town with its towers, steeples, domes, and bridges melting in the distant haze, its noise and turmoil reaching your eerie retreat only as a muffled hum, a throbbing stimulant to work by day, a sweet soporific for rest by night—this is to know the joys of true privacy and the luxury of deep sleep. ”

“ One autumn night about a decade ago, in the quiet village of Princeton, a party of bold young men might have been seen wending their way stealthily westward along the broad, though wavering, line that marks the route by which in former days the stage-coaches were wont to rumble back and forth between New York and Philadelphia. ”

“ But farther along in their walk they are just as fond of looking down the perspective of the straight side streets from the central spine of Fifth Avenue past block after block of New York homes, away down beyond the almost-converging rows of even lamp-posts to the Hudson and the purple Palisades of Jersey, with the glorious gleam and glow of the sunset; while the energetic "L" trains scurry past, one after another, trailing beautiful swirls of steam and carrying other New Yorkers to other homes. ”

“ Ah, my dear, could anything make it more beautiful, more binding than it is now?
Ernest
It is perfect. The one divine thing we share with God. The Church is right in that respect. I used to look upon marriage as a mere contract. It's a religious sacrament.
Helen
Does the wedding ceremony make it sacred? [Pg 160]
Ernest
That mediæval incantation! No, love, which is given by God, not the artificial form made by man.
Helen
I knew it! I knew you'd see it—the mistake of all the ages. They've tried to make love fit marriage. It can't be done. Marriage must be changed to fit love. ”

“ So are the classic poets who sigh sentimentally over the pathetic illusions of happy youth. So are the philosophers and preachers and professors and parents who tell you how little you know about the unknown gulf of reality before you. It has even come to this: you have learned the trick of it yourselves, for I have observed certain of your own poets and orators during your class-day exercises satirically making game of their ignorance of the world they are about to enter, or sentimentalizing fondly over the ending of what they have learned to call "the happiest period of a man's life!" ”

“ But such delights never came to Hamilton Knox, who sighed and went back to his seat on the string-piece of the Morgue dock, snapped cigarette butts with yellow-stained fingers at the foolish, futile waves, and wished there were a war, so he could go as a correspondent and do big things and get decorated for bravery.
In reporting, as in everything else, to learn your job you have to begin at a dreary bottom. Even if there had been a war just then, no paper would have sent Knox, because he was not good enough. ”

“ At that the old graduate laughed with much amusement: "So you think I have been worrying about the college, do you? You really think that you, little man, are of sufficient consequence to cause anxiety for the university? Princeton certainly is changed in many ways—many things are much better than when I was in college; we did not have that magnificent library, nor such athletic facilities, nor the honor system, nor many advantages that you have. Yes, many things are much better than when I was in college, but you do not happen to be one of them. ”

“ What did I tell you, Theodore? The old marriage doesn't fit the New Woman. A self-supporting girl like Helen objects to obeying a mere man—like Ernest.
Helen
[patting the Judge's arm affectionately, too]
Uncle Everett, you know nothing about it! You think you understand the new generation. The only generation you understand is the one which clamored for "Woman's Rights." [To Ernest.] I obey you already—every day of my life, do I not, dear? [Looking up into his face.] You're my "boss," aren't you, Ernest? [To Judge.] But I do object to contracting by law for what is better done by love. ”