Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ All this was not irritating, or even displeasing, to Jeremy. He was too thorough an American, despite his long residence in Paris, and too keen a business man, notwithstanding his wife’s fortune, not to derive satisfaction from every evidence of human energy. The Place de l’Opéra appealed to the same instincts in his temperament that would have been gratified by the sight of a stop-cylinder printing-machine in action. But, not the less for that, his heart was domiciled in the hôtel in the Villa Dupont. ”

“ And when he is sitting down he will be hitching at his trousers all the time, so that the only thing one remembers about him afterwards is the pattern of his stockings.”
“We ought to invite him to dinner,” suggested Jeremy.
“Without doubt,” agreed his wife; “but to breakfast first, I think — and on Sunday. One can judge a man’s character so well by the way he behaves at Sunday breakfast. If he fidgets, and drinks quantities of water, then he’s dissipated! I don’t know why Saturday night is always fatal to dissipated men, but it is. ”

“ Prolonged experience of the world had invested her with an admirable broad-mindedness, which caused her to tread the notoriously dangerous paths of the American Colony, in which she was a constant and conspicuous figure, with the assurance of an Indian fakir walking on broken glass — pleasurably appreciative of the risk, that is, while assured by consummate savoir faire against cutting her feet. ”

“ Sidney Kane, and a few men — Daulas and De Bousac and Gerald Kennedy and that insufferable little Lister man. Then Madame Palffy. It makes me furious every time I hear her called ‘madame.’ The creature was born in Worcester — and do you know, Jeremy, I’m positive she buys her gowns at an upholsterer’s? No mere dressmaker could lend her that striking resemblance to a sofa, which is growing stronger every day! Her French is too impossible. ”

“ What might have been termed her masculine method was based on the broad, general principle that the adult male is most interested in the persons most interested in him, and it never failed, in its many modifications, of effect. ”