David Graham Phillips

“ Then there's the Sam Tremenger sort of man—a good talker, but something ruinous when he turns loose in a ball-room and begins to batter the women's toilets to bits. He's a dinner man, but you can't ask him when politics may be discussed—he gets so violent that he not only talks all the time, but makes a deafening clamor and uses swear words—and we still have quiet people who get gooseflesh for damn. ”

“ Burke will be satisfied long before the season is over.
Quite a library isn't it? How simple it must be to live in a city like New York or Boston where one bothers only with the people of one set and has practically no bookkeeping beyond a calling list. And here it's getting worse and worse each season.
Let me see, how many sets are there? There's the set that can say must to us—the White House and the Cabinet and the embassies. Then there's the set we can say must to—a huge, big set and, in a way, important, but there's nobody really important in it. ”

“ Jessie saved the luncheon—or, at least, thought she was saving it. Mrs. Burke [Pg 19] and I had only to listen and eat. I caught her looking at me several times, and then I saw shrewdness in her eyes—good-natured, but none the less penetrating for that. And I knew I should like her, and should get on with her. At last our eyes met and we both smiled. After that she somehow seemed less crowded and foreign in her tight, fine clothes. I saw she was impatient for Jessie to go the moment luncheon was over, but it was nearly three o'clock before we were left alone together. ”

“ Though conversation at Washington in society isn't on any too high a plane, as a rule—how could conversation in a mixed society anywhere be very high?—still it isn't the wishy-washy chatter and gossip that Jim Lafollette delights in. ”

“ Still, I am American enough to despise people who are courteous or otherwise, according as they look up to or look down on the particular person's family and position. I guess young Mr. Burke is his father in an aggravated form. Yet Jessie, and Rachel, too, pretend to like him. And probably they really do—it's not hard to like any one who is not asking favors and is in a position to grant them, and isn't so near to one that his quills stick into one.
The Countess of Wend came in to see me this afternoon and told me all about the row over at the legation. ”

“ Of course, army officers almost always go in for gossip—that comes from sitting round with their women at lonely posts where nothing occurs. And they, as a rule, either gossip or simply drivel when they talk to women, because all the women that ever liked them liked them for their brass buttons, and all the women they ever liked they liked for their pretty faces and empty heads. So, usually, to get an army officer [Pg 89] at dinner is to sit with a bowl of soft taffy held to your lips and a huge spoonful of it thrust into your mouth every time you stop talking. ”

“ Jessie reproached me with tragedy in her always intensely serious gray eyes. "Take you?" she exclaimed. "Take a Talltowers when there's a chance to get one? Why, as soon as I explained who you were, she fairly quivered with eagerness."
"You had to explain who a Talltowers [Pg 11] is?" I said with mock amazement. It's delightful to poke fun at Jessie; she always appreciates a jest by taking it more seriously than an ordinary statement of fact.
"But, dear, you mustn't be offended. You know Mrs. Burke is very common and ignorant. She doesn't know the first thing about the world. ”

“ But, to return to our dinner—Mrs. Burke went in with the German ambassador, and I saw that they were getting on famously. He is a very clever man in a small way, and has almost an American sense of humor. As soon as he saw that she intended what she said to be laughed at he gave himself up to it. "Your Mrs. Burke is charming, Miss Talltowers," said he to me after dinner. "She ranks with Bret Harte and Mark Twain. It's only in America that you find old women who make you forget to wish you were with young and pretty women." ”

“ If a girl has any really bad qualities anywhere in her they come out here. And if a Washington girl does marry a man—for himself—and I rather think they make marriages of the heart more than most girls in the same sort of society in other cities—don't you, Miss Talltowers? ”

“ Jessie and Rachel alone could make anybody, who wasn't positively awful, a go. Then Nadeshda, bent on marrying Cyrus at first, was a big help—and every mama with a marriageable daughter was hot on Cyrus' trail. So it's easy to make an infallible recipe for getting into society: First, wealth; second, willingness to act on competent advice; third, get a "secretary" who knows society and has intimate friends in its most exclusive set, and who also knows how to arrange entertainments ”

“ Still, it would have been interesting to read some day, when I shall have forgotten the little steps—for although we've had in all only a month before the season and five weeks between New Year's and Ash Wednesday, so much has been crowded into that time. It's amazing what one can accomplish if one uses every moment to a single purpose. And I've not only used my own time, but Robert's and Jessie's and the time of their and my friends, and that of Nadeshda and a dozen other people. ”

“ And although you are very attractive and are always having men in love with you, you've simply got to make up your mind soon. Look how many such nice, good-looking girls have been crowded aside by the young ones. Men are crazy about freshness, no matter what they pretend. Yes, you must decide, dear. And—I couldn't endure poor Carteret when I married him."
Carteret is a miserable specimen, and Jessie's ways keep him in a dazed state—like an old hen sitting on a limb and turning her head round and round to keep watch on a fox that's racing in a circle underneath. ”

“ I suppose I'm wrong, but I can't help suspecting a man without a sense of humor of being a solemn fraud.
You'd think American women, at the capital, at least, would be interested in politics. But they're not. They say it's the vulgarity of the intriguing and of most of the best intriguers that makes them dislike politics, even here. I suspect there's another reason. We women are so petted by the men that we don't have to know anything to make ourselves agreeable. If we're pretty and listen well that's all that's necessary. ”

“ If you're going to make an entertainment a success you've got to know something more or less definite about the people that are coming, whom to ask to certain things [Pg 41] and whom not to ask. Take a man like Phil Harkness, or a girl like Nell Witton, for example. Either of them would ruin a dinner, but Phil shines at a ball, where silence and good steady dancing are what the girls want. As for Nell, she's possible at a ball only if you can be sure John Rush or somebody like him is coming—somebody to sit with her and help her blink at the dancers and be bored. ”

“ She was looking at the beautiful little clock set in the dashboard of the auto.
"Only fifteen minutes!" I said. "And you never before were known to be less [Pg 9] than half an hour late. You even kept the President waiting twenty minutes."
"Isn't it stupid, this fussing about being on time?" she replied. "I don't believe any but dull people and those who want to get something from one are ever on time. For those who really live, life is so full that punctuality is impossible. But I should have been on time, if I hadn't been down seeing the Secretary of War about Willie Catesby—poor Willie! ”

“ Burke danced with the British ambassadress—the ambassador is ill. I had Jim on my hands most of the evening—though I was flirting desperately with little D'Estourelle, he hung to me with a maddening husbandish air of proprietorship. I don't see how I ever endured him, much less thought of marrying him. Cyrus Burke is a king beside him. Excuse me from men who think the fact that they've done a woman the honor of loving her gives them a property right to her. ”

“ He was very precise and distant with me—how "Lizzie's" eyes did twinkle as she watched him. I saw that she was "on to" Tom with the quickness with which a shrewd woman always finds out, once she gets the clue.
"Have you had Miss Talltowers shown her rooms, Mrs. Burke?" he soon inquired.
"Why, no, pa," replied Mrs. Burke. [Pg 27] "I forgot it clear." As she said "pa" he winced and her eyes danced with fun. She went on to me: "You don't mind our calling each other pa and ma before you, do you, Miss Talltowers? ”

“ But most of the women are like "ma" Burke, who'd as soon think of entering for a foot-race as of interfering in her husband's political affairs in any way, beyond giving him some sound advice about the men that can be trusted and the men that can't. I suppose if there were real careers in public life in [Pg 91] this country, not dependent upon elections, the Washington women wouldn't be so lazy and indifferent, but would wake up and intrigue their brothers and sons and other male relatives into all sorts of things. ”

“ They're just goats, and they know it, and they feel it; and when you go to their house they suggest a restaurant keeper welcoming his customers; and when they come to your house they suggest Cook's tourists roaming in the private apartments of a palace, smiling apologetically at every one and wondering whether they're not about to be told to "step lively." ”

“ It isn't because they're snobs—lots of sheep are nauseating snobs. It isn't because they're very [Pg 146] badly self-made—I defy anybody to produce a goat that can touch Willie Catesby or Rennie Tucker, yet each of them has ancestors by the score. It isn't because they're new—the Burkes are new, yet Mrs. Burke has at least a dozen intimate acquaintances of the right sort. It isn't because they're ostentatious and boastful about wealth and prices—there are scores of sheep who make the same sort of absurd exhibition of vulgarity. ”

“ The President is trying [Pg 92] to make society amount to something, but he won't succeed. Whatever benefit there may be in it will go, not to him, but to men like Senator Burke. He doesn't go any more than he can help, except to his own breakfasts. But he sends his wife, and so, without wasting any of his time, he makes himself prominent in a very short space of time and gets all the big social indirect influence—the influence of the women on their husbands. ”

“ Carteret was waiting for the servant to open the door. I hurried her back toward the auto, being a little afraid that Jim would be desperate enough to come out and beg her to help him—and I knew she would do it if she were asked. In the first place, Jessie always does what she's asked to do—if it helps her to spend time and breath. In the second place, she'd never let up on me if she thought I had so good a chance to marry. For she knows that Washington is the hardest place in the world for a woman to find a husband [Pg 8] unless she's got something that appeals to the ambition of men. ”

“ I often say to my husband that I think it's perfectly frightful the way girls—young girls—go about in Washington. They're out before they should be even thinking of leaving the nursery, and go round practically unchaperoned. ”

“ Did you see her eyes—her hair—the way her arms looked—as if they could wind themselves round a man's neck and choke him to death while her eyes were fooling him into thinking that such a death was greater happiness than to live? ”

“ Cyrus showed that he agreed with me. "What I was going to say," he went on, "was, that if a Washington girl does choose a man, after she has known lots of men and has come to prefer him, she's not likely—at least, not so likely—to repent her bargain. And," he said, getting quite warmed up by his subject, "if a man looks forward to his wife's going about in society, as he must if he lives in a certain way, I think he's wise to select some one who has learned [Pg 135] something of the world—how to conduct herself, how to control herself, how to fill the rôle Fate has assigned her." ”