Edward Bellamy

“ Gifford at length, remembering that Hunt was a guest, forced a momentary, ghastly smile. Annie was looking melancholy enough before, but a slight compression of the lips indicated that she had received the full effect. Certain degrees of badness in jokes stamp the joker as a natural inferior in the eyes of even the most rabid of social levelers. Scarcely any possible exhibition of depravity gives quite the sickening sense of disappointment in the perpetrator imparted by a genuinely bad or stale joke. ”

“ In the evening, which was her first opportunity, she came to him and said in a tone in which, by this time, weariness and disgust had taken the place of indignation:—
“You were absurdly mistaken in thinking that Miss Roberts was trying to flirt.”
“Bless your dear, jealous heart!” interrupted Hunt laughingly, with an air of patronizing affection. “I'd no idea you minded it so much. There, there! Let's not allude to this matter again. No, no! not another word!” he gayly insisted, putting his hand over her mouth as she was about to make another effort to be heard. ”

“ Hunt, whose face had sprung back like a steel-trap to its usual indifferent expression, smiled nonchalantly at Merril's remark. One whose reticent habit makes his secrets so absolutely secure as Hunt's private affairs always were is stirred to amusement rather than trepidation by random guesses which come near the truth. ”

“ As Hunt well knew, her pet aversion was people who lugged mispronounced French phrases into their conversation under the impression that they imparted a piquant and graceful effect. It was a touch of vulgarity which inspired her with a violent contempt absurdly disproportioned to the gravity of the offense. It had always been a cherished theory of hers that there were certain offenses in manners which were keys to character. ”

“ We must be going,” said Miss Roberts, rising. She had been lingering, in the hope that something would happen to leave a more pleasant impression of Hunt's appearance, but seeing that matters were drifting from bad to worse, she hastened to break off the painful scene. Annie rose silently without saying a word, and avoided Lou's eyes as she kissed her good-by.
“Must you go?” Hunt said. “I 'm sure you would not be in such haste if you knew how rarely it is that my engagements leave me free to devote an evening to the ladies. You might call on Annie a dozen times and not meet me.” ”

“ I should say the last would be the surest cure and leave least of a sore place in her feelings, but it would be hardest on his vanity. Everybody knows that a man would 'rather seem a scamp than a fool.'”
“I don't believe there's a man in the world who would play the voluntary fool to save any woman's heart from breaking, though he might manage the scamp,” remarked Mathewson. “And anyhow, Potts, I believe there 's no girl who would n't choose to be jilted outright, rather than be juggled out of her affections that way.” ”

“ We can't help people suffering because we are so faulty and imperfect, but we might at least see that nobody ever had a pang from thinking us better than we are.”
“Look at Hunt!” said Sturgis. “He does n't open his mouth, but drinks in Potts's wisdom as eagerly as if he did n't know it was a pump that never stops.” ”

“ It is enough to say that they were the very worst which Hunt, after great industry, had been able to find; and there he was waiting, just the other side the paper, in a glow of expectant vanity, to receive her acknowledgments.
“Well, what do you think of it? You need n't try to hide your blushes. You deserve every word of it, you know, Miss Modesty,” he said gayly.
“It's very nice,” replied Annie, making a desperate effort.
“I thought you 'd like it,” he said, with self-satisfied assurance. “It's queer that a fellow can't lay on the praise too thick to please a woman. ”

“ Then her every touch and look and word was eloquent to his senses as to the precise state of her feeling toward him, but now he was dull and insensitive to such direct intuition. He could not longer feel, but could only argue as to how she might be minded toward him, and this it was which caused him so much trepidation, in spite of so many reasons why he should be confident of the result. Argument as to another's feelings is such a wretched substitute for the intuition of sympathy. ”

“ Seeing that a man is generally ready to sacrifice his character in reality to his own interests, he ought to be willing to sacrifice it in appearance to another's.”
Mathewson was squelched, but Sturgis came to his relief with the suggestion:—
“Would n't a little genuine heartache, which I take it is healthy enough, if it is n't pleasant, be better for her than the cynical feeling, the disgust with human nature, which she would experience from finding her ideal of excellence a scamp or a fool?” ”

“ Vanity aside, it was very jolly to have a fine, nice girl who thought no end of a fellow, to walk, talk, and sing with, and to have in mind when one sang the college songs about love and wine with the fellows. ”

“ The beneficent common law does not condemn a man merely on his own confession unless circumstances in evidence lend probability to his self-accusation. Before we coincide in Mr. Hunt's opinion of himself, let us therefore inquire into the circumstances.
He was in the last term of senior year at ——— college. For the past year he had been boarding at the Giffords', and Annie and he had fallen in love. ”

“ Miss Roberts glanced at Annie, and seeing that her face glowed with embarrassment, smothered her indignation, and replied with a colorless “Yes.”
“The only drawback,” continued Hunt, who manifestly thought he was making himself very agreeable, “is that such bosom friends always tell each other all their affairs, which of course involve the affairs of all their friends also. ”

“ You don't look like one.”
“How do they usually look?” she asked sharply.
“Why, it is generally understood that they are rather vulgar, I believe, but you, I am sure, look like a person of culture.” He said this as if he thought he were conveying a rather neat compliment. Indignant as she was, Miss Roberts's strongest feeling was compassion for Annie, and she bit her lips and made no reply.
After a moment's silence, Hunt asked her how she liked his goatee. It was a new way of cutting his whiskers, and young ladies were generally close observers and therefore good judges of such matters. ”

“ He thought he had a sure thing if ever a fellow had, but women were so cursedly unaccountable. Supposing she should take it into her head to accept him! No logic could take account of a woman's whimsies. Then what a pretty fix he would have got himself into, just by a foolhardy freak! But there was a strain of Norse blood in Hunt, and in spite of occasional touches of ague, the risk of the scheme had in itself a certain fascination for him. ”

“ He had fallen in love because it was the correct thing for a young collegian, engaged in the study of the humanities, to be in love, and made him feel more like a man than smoking, drinking, or even sporting a stove-pipe hat and cane. ”

“ Supposing, as you suggest, that we shall be the jilted and not the jilters, it will be certainly for our interest that the ladies should spare our feelings by disenchanting us,—saying, as it were, the charm backward that first charmed us. ”

“ It would be quite a novel sensation to revolutionize one's ordinary rule of conduct so as to make a point of seeming bad or stupid. There would be as much psychology in it as in an extra term, at least. ”

“ A man would find out, for instance, how much there was in him besides personal vanity and love of approbation. It would be a devilish small residue with most of us, I fancy.”
The talk took a new turn, and the fun grew fast and furious around Hunt, who sat puffing his pipe, absorbed in contemplation. At about half-past nine, when things were getting hilarious, he beat a retreat, followed by the reproaches of the fellows. He was determined to administer the first dose of Potts's painless cure to his interesting patient that very evening, if she had not already retired. ”

“ It was his business, having got her in love with him, to get her out again and leave her where she was.”
“Get her out again?” demanded Mathewson. “How was he to do that?”
“Humph!” grunted Potts. “If you have n't found it much easier to lose a friend than to win one, you 're luckier than most. If you asked me how he was to get her in love with him, I should have to scratch my head, but the other thing is as easy as unraveling a stocking.”
“Well, but, Potts,” inquired Sturgis, with interest, “how could Goethe have gone to work, for instance, to disgust Frederica with him?” ”

“ If she is one of your high-steppers as to dignity and sense of honor, let him play mean and seem to do a few dirty tricks. If she's a stickler for manners and good taste, let him betray a few traits of boorishness or Philistinism ”

“ Two or more similar sensations coming near together are multiplied by mutual reverberations so as to be much more impressive than if they occurred at considerable intervals. Hunt's tongue joke not only retroacted to deepen the impression of vulgarity which his last evening's performance had given Annie, but in turn was made to appear a far more significant indication of his character on account of its sequence to that display. ”

“ Meanwhile, Hunt was straitened for time; only eight or ten days of the term were left, and in that time he must effect Annie's cure, if at all. A slow cure would be much more likely to prove a sure one, but he must do the best he could in the time he had. ”

“ Oh, no, it's only deceit when you appear worse than you are, not when you try to appear better. Strikes me that when you 'ye got a girl into a fix, it won't do at that time of day to plead your conscience as a reason for not getting her out of it. ”