A. M. Williamson

“ There was a wild waving of handkerchiefs on the ship, and a frantic fluttering of white among the flowers, as if a flock of butterflies had been frightened up into the air. Still we were a long time getting in, and I grew quite impatient; but finally Louise, who had attended to my packing, took charge of my handbag, my sunshade and coat, with her mistress's and Miss Woodburn's things. The moment had come to bid the ship good-bye.
"Now," said Mrs. Ess Kay, slipping her arm into mine, "I wonder, dear child, if you would mind being left alone to deal with the custom-house people? ”

“ There was an old-fashioned garden on one side, with a running flame of hollyhocks hemming it in; the background was a dark green oak and maple grove; and in a clover meadow beyond the garden was a colony of beehives. It looked an ideal, storybook place, and I wished it might be the Valley Farm, but thought such a thing too good to be true. When one is going to stop at a house one has never seen, as Vic says, it usually turns out to be the one of all others you like least. ”

“ As we steamed on, along the green and golden flood, between banks that appeared to fall back in admiration, I began to love the Hudson so much that I could have shrieked with rage at the great staring advertisements on hoardings. What can the scenery have done to Americans, that they should do their best to spoil it? No wonder most of them come over to see ours, which we have the sense to let alone, even if it crumbles. ”

“ It was dazzling for a moment, but before one realised the change the brilliance had been drunk up by purple shadows. The outline of trees and foot-hills melted into the pansy gloom, and at last, with one dying quiver of light all warmth of colour was blotted out. Water and sky paled to a pensive grey-blue, and as the French say, "it made night."
There was a tremendous menu for dinner, such as we used to have for breakfast on shipboard, and droves of things whose names I'd never heard before. Just for curiosity, I ordered several of the strangest, and some of them were a great success. ”

“ I was suddenly so happy with my surprise-present that I forgave America for having imaginative reporters, and wasn't homesick for the pony or for Berengaria and her puppies, or anything.
Vivace went out with us in the electric carriage, and even Mrs. Ess Kay had to admire him as he sat straight up in my lap, like a bronze statue of a dog. "He's a thoroughbred, anyhow," she remarked. "He can't have cost a penny less than five hundred dollars, so whoever the anonymous giver is, he must be a rich man." ”

“ The girls edged away good-naturedly, and there was a man almost as fine-looking as Mr. Brett, smiling at us, and holding out his big hand.
Everything was big about him; his voice, his brown throat, his shoulders, and his good white smile, shining with kindness and two rows of perfect teeth; his nature, too, as you could see by his beaming, humorous grey eyes, and the generous dimple in his square chin.
"Whit, this is the little English ladyship I've told you about, who's staying over at our house," said Mr. Trowbridge. ”

“ On top of her head is a quite little coil of hair that lifts itself, and spirals up, like a giant snail-shell. A dagger keeps it in place, and looks as if the point plunged into Mrs. Ess Kay's brain, though I suppose it doesn't. Over the forehead is a noble roll which has the effect of a breaker just about to fall into surf, but never falling. It's a black breaker, and the straight, thick eyebrows an inch below it are black too; so are the short eyelashes, also thick and straight, like a stiff fringe, but the eyes are grey—grey as glass, though not transparent. ”

“ Brett wouldn't take me. To get to the restaurant you go up a long flight of marble stairs, with two grinning Chinese devil-heads, like watch dogs, on the wall at the top.
Nothing could be more modern and Western than the Chicago surging and roaring outside. But as you pass the guardian devils and cross the threshold of that restaurant you turn your back on the present and find yourself in the Far East. I liked it better than Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous Aladdin's Cave, for there's nothing imitation or stagey about this place. ”

“ Every minute they swooped by, running north and south, and I trembled lest they should leap their tracks and crush us into powder.
"It's only the Elevated, deah," said Sally, pitying my agitation, "and it's never fallen down yet, so I don't believe it will to-day. You shall take a ride with me if Cousin Katherine will let you, which she probably won't. You can't think what fun it is shooting past the windows of the houses; just like glancing into an exciting story book you know you'll never have a chance to finish. You do get a peep into tragedies and comedies, sometimes." ”

“ It looks a staircase made for sitting out dances with men you like, and evidently it knows its value as a flirting place and lives up to it, for there are fat, bright-coloured silk and satin cushions resting invitingly against the wall, on each one of the shallow steps. Most of the rooms are enormous, and consist half of quaint leaded windows, with seats underneath. But better than anything else is the verandah, which runs all round the house, and is not only as wide as a good-sized room, but is fitted up like a succession of rooms. ”

“ You English people lump us all together, for our 'American accent,' but we can tell whether a person is from Massachusetts, or New York, or Illinois, or Kentucky, and so on, just as you know Devonshire from Lancashire."
The wistaria arbour, which we soon reached, was like a fairy bower hung with thousands of amethyst lamps, burning perfume instead of oil; and the moment we sat down a troop of the fairy residents, cleverly disguised as grey squirrels, with adorable little faces, began excitedly to talk us over. ”

“ Look here, dear girl, you don't quite realise perhaps what a good time I'd give you if you married me. I've got as much money as my sister has, and I'd do just as you liked about staying in the army. You could have a house in New York, and a whole, real live castle in your own country, if you liked. I wouldn't care a rap how much you spent on clothes, and there isn't a woman in America who's got better jewels than you should have--I'd see to that. ”

“ Then I should like you to call me Betty," said I, shaking hands hard with Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny, and my heart warming to her for her own sake as well as his. There was a good smell about her of linen dried on the grass and of freshly-baked cake. I can never smell those smells, I know, without remembering her.
She smiled, and pressed my hand. "Why, you are just like an American girl, my dear," she exclaimed. "Not a bit stiff and English like we supposed you would be. We all thought we were going to be afraid of you, but I guess we won't, will we, Patty and Ide?" ”

“ As I looked through the hallway up sprang the lift once more, fierce and swift as one of the rockets which I used as a child to be afraid might strike the angels. A minute of suspense and it swooped down again with two girls in it. I felt as if it were a thing I oughtn't to be seeing somehow; it was so much like spying on the digestive apparatus of a skeleton.
"You see," explained Mrs. Ess Kay, "the Taylours and other people were frightfully anxious to get in. The rest of the building will be finished soon, and this is going to be one of the swellest apartment houses in New York." ”

“ I liked our suite, with two staterooms, a bath, and a dear little white-and-blue drawing-room, about as big as the old dolls' house I inherited from Vic. I was thankful to find I was to chum with Miss Woodburn, not Mrs. Ess Kay, for I never could have stood that. It was fun finding places to hang up our things when they were unpacked, and Mrs. Ess Kay's French maid, Louise, helped me get settled, paying me so many compliments on my hair, and my eyes and my complexion, that I grew quite confused; but perhaps that's a habit in which American ladies encourage their maids. ”

“ But Vic says that's all nonsense; that no woman, no matter how much she thinks herself in love, ever stops in love with her husband. The thing is to marry a man who will let you do as you like; and of course he must be rich."
Sally sighed. "Well, dear, she's your sister, and I'm just nothing to you at all, but I'd like to tell you to forget about her advice, and not care whether a man is rich or poor, or even well born, if only he's made himself a gentleman, body and heart and soul, and is strong and clever enough to take care of you." ”

“ If you are invited to a party, you never know a bit what it will be like; whether you will dance in a barn, and eat your supper on horseback out of decorated mangers; whether there will be captive balloons at a garden party; whether a Noah's Ark will have been rigged up on a miniature lake, or whether you will have a pair of skates provided for you and find yourself cutting figures on the ice in a gorgeously illuminated skating-rink, with the thermometer up to goodness knows how many degrees outside. ”

“ The great beauties look bored, and some of them have their faces painted and the air of wearing transformations; but not one of the charming women driving up and down Bellevue Avenue that afternoon looked bored, and hardly any were painted. I never saw people appear to be so delighted with life, and so thoroughly alive, as if the glorious sea air were frothing in their veins, like champagne. ”

“ To get into the Four Hundred if you've lived west of Chicago, (unless you're Californian, which is getting to be fashionable) , is just like having to climb over one of those great, high walls of yours in England, bristling with nails or broken glass."
"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "How funny! Fancy if people who live in Surrey should glare at people who live in Devonshire." ”

“ My first impression of the Emporium was a huge, rambling wooden building rather like a vast barn with a dozen smaller barns tacked on to it, and windows let in. It is painted pea-green, and has a rough verandah running partly round it--a high verandah with no steps, or if any, at such long intervals that you must search for them. But as there's no pavement we just scrambled out of the buggy and cart onto the verandah, and there we were landed among the most extraordinary collection of things I ever dreamed of. ”

“ I haven't caught sight of a dowdy woman since I came. None of their frocks hitch up in front and dip down behind, as you see people's doing if you are taken to a shop in Oxford Street or even sometimes in Bond Street; and their belts always point beautifully down at the waist, although it isn't the Season in New York.
The train was a fast one, and simply hurled itself and us through space, as if we had got onto the tail of a comet by mistake; but it hardly waggled at all, so that we could have studied the scenery nicely if we had been able to see it behind the advertisements. ”

“ London roars--a monotonous, cannon-balls-in-the-cellar roar, with just a light tinkle of hansom cabs sprinkled over the top of the solid sound; but that great straight street into which we suddenly flashed had no solid sound. It shrieked in short, sharp yells, made up of a dozen distinct noises, each one louder and more insistent than the other.
There were trams and tram bells, and motors and carriages, and over all an appalling thunder of trains rushing to and fro above our heads, on lines roofing the entire street, built upon iron stilts. ”

“ As if for a reward of virtue, just as I had disposed of my leavings, and stuck the roses into my belt, the last of the luggage arrived. There were two Custom House men near to choose from, and as I've heard, in choosing between two evils it's better to choose the less, I smiled beseechingly at the smaller man who had just crammed a pile of lace blouses into the box of a lady with nervous prostration. ”

“ Whether it was the beauty of the Park, or whether it was something in herself, I don't know, but Sally Woodburn was in a sentimental mood. She is generally full of fun, in her soft, quiet little way; but this morning she was all poetry and romance. She quoted Tennyson, and several modern American poets, whose names I was ashamed to say I didn't even know, as their verses seemed charming; and when she had found a certain narrow, shady path which she had been looking for, suddenly she said, "Let's talk about love. What do you think about love, Betty?" ”

“ You give a crush, which is grand if you have a big house, or you ask a few bright, particular ones and enjoy yourself. Or in the country you have a house party, and pick out the men because they can shoot and the women because they are pretty; or else, if it's winter, you hunt and you have theatricals. But the Americans at Newport turn up their noses at that slow, old-fashioned kind of thing. They lie awake nights (I'm sure they must) to think of something so original that nobody else can ever have had anything the least like it before. ”

“ Stuyvesant-Knox and Mrs. Van der Windt talking, I should have supposed that in America a man like Mr. Brett, for instance, could be received anywhere. As it is, I suppose--no, nobody could despise him. For myself, I'm proud to know such a brave man. But--but of course we're not likely to meet him again, are we?"
"In Society?" laughed Sally. "Poor fellow, it doesn't look much like it now, does it? Though I believe he's a man in a thousand, and worth six of any of those that Cousin Katherine will let you know--counting Potter, though he is my relative." ”

“ I think American girls must be braver than English ones, for where with us, if a girl drives a motor she is so remarkable that her picture is at once put in a newspaper, in the States a girl in a car, in the midst of howling traffic, doesn't even have the air of wanting to scream or faint, but just sits straight up and smiles with her figure looking inexpressibly French ”

“ There, we would meet everybody we knew; and it was odd to see the calm, but slightly conscious air of superiority with which the Everybodies, going in or out, passed the poor nobodies assembled to watch the Casino entrance. Just as the middle and lower class people stand till they are ready to drop, only to see the Queen drive into the Park, or leave Buckingham Palace dreadfully bored, to open a bridge, so these Americans jostle each other to see their millionaires and especially millionaires, going to enjoy themselves. ”

“ Soon we were near enough to New York to see the tremendous chimney things clearly, and they sharpened the impression that I was sailing straight into a dream. There could be no such things in the real world; they wouldn't be possible. But the dream felt very interesting and intense all of a sudden, and I didn't want to wake up from it just then, in spite of Mrs. Ess Kay.
The tall shapes were bright and vivid now, as giant hollyhocks growing in irregular rows. Still, they did not look one bit like houses, or offices where people could work without going stark, staring mad. ”

“ I set him down on the ground, and Sally and I walked on together without speaking. But at last she said, "Penny for your thoughts, deah?"
"I was wondering about--class distinctions in America?" I answered. "I think--oh, I do think it's very silly of you to have any at all. I always supposed, till I knew you and Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that one person was considered just as good as another in America. And it ought to be like that, in a new country, where you haven't an aristocracy." ”