Alice Duer Miller

“ Now and then, when the young men of the Institute gave a dance—a hop, it was generally called—one of them would invite Marie Louise, and she would to all appearances mingle with those who felt themselves her superiors. It was only an appearance. She had no claim on their attention. She was not pretty enough to be universally championed by brothers; and her habit of hanging all day long over her own front gate, combined with her occasional disregard of the rules of grammar, caused mothers to avoid her and to describe her as a “lazy,” and, I am afraid, “common little piece.” ”

“ Marie Louise’s first conscious thought had been: Now, when I travel, I shall always go in the parlor-car.
It is hard to see why hitherto a parlor-car had represented to her an offensive class distinction, for she did not seem to suffer at all from her total neglect by the upper circles of Stonehurst society; and it need not be supposed, because the town’s population comprised only some fourteen thousand souls, that social strata were less differentiated than elsewhere.
The aristocrats, for the most part, lived on Park Slope. ”

“ Marie Louise’s imagination saw magnificent glimpses of herself in these romances. She considered herself far from good-looking, but was always hoping that some day she would discover a style of dress that would gather her beauties and defects into one tremendous, decided effect. ”

“ She had the common infantile trick of leading her own complete and absorbing existence—as busy as a little ant’s—far below the lives of the two grown-ups, whom she dutifully called parents while hardly aware of their presence. ”

“ For her own part, she admired dark, sinister coloring, and would have yielded herself even more ecstatically to life if she had been a mysterious-looking brunette. Her confidence in brown women might have been shaken by the experience of her mother—a dark, plump person—who had not succeeded in holding the affection of her Welsh husband. ”

“ Carman who first suggested that they might build a house. Marie Louise had responded warmly with all the feminine instinct for material creation; and began at once to dream of a palace with columns, which, erected on Park Slope, would make the Institute look like a country schoolhouse.
Leaning over the gate, she received the congratulations of her friends. The street was a well-trodden one. ”