Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ One night in late August her child was born, and the west wind that brought a new soul to the Sterling door, pausing an instant in its passing, gathered up, and in its kind arms bore away, on its pathless flight into the Great Unknown, the tired spirit of Helen Vane. ”

“ This little stream at our feet, for example: how it preaches the lesson that while we must meet with days that are cold, unsympathetic, drear, it’s not only possible, but best, to preserve, under the ice in which adversity wraps our hearts, the life and laughter which friendlier suns have taught us! I wonder if that is not the secret of all human contentment — to resign oneself to the chilling touch of the wintry days of life, secure in the knowledge that summer will return, the compensation be made manifest, and the wrong turned to right. ”

“ She liked to believe that what he said was true, that literary excellence counted for nothing in a commercial age, and that a man who would not conform to silly superficial standards had no chance of recognition. But Helen was a woman to whom a goose was a goose, and a swan a swan, at all times, and regardless of ownership. ”

“ They were to have seen them all — drunk, in company, of the wine of beauty and inspiration, doubling their individual pleasures with the magic wand of mutual comprehension, as he should turn the treasures found along their enchanted way into such words as men preserve to praise, and she stand at his side, the first to read and reverence. ”

“ In my dealings with humanity, I’ve frequently met with misunderstanding; but never, in the attitude of Nature, a lack of what I felt to be completest comprehension of my mood. She always seems to divine our difficulties, and to have some little helpful hint, some small parable, which, if we read it aright, will point out the solution of our problem, or at least serve to soothe the momentary pang. ”

“ The average man’s share of applause is in strict proportion to his deserts. In Vane’s case the allowance had been appreciably in excess of his due, but it was exhausted at last, and flattery is a drug which, with indulgence, becomes, a necessity. ”

“ Something — God, or chance, or destiny, or whatever you choose to call it — led me around that last turn of the road at a moment when, if I’m not mistaken, a fellow being came to the snapping-point of self-control. ”

“ He resigned his position, on the plea of devoting himself entirely to writing, and there ensued a period during which he sunned himself in society’s favour, and received his share of flattery in return for several trifles contributed to the magazines, but created nothing worthy even of the infinitesimal effort which he made. A man had to think, to arrange, to compose, he told his wife. ”

“ John Vane had wooed his wife with the easy confidence born of adequate position, adequate means, and more than adequate ability. Four years of Harvard had taught him to believe life in the little Western town which had been his birthplace, to be, for a man of literary bent, a practical impossibility ”

“ Instead, they touch, perhaps to drift apart again after a moment; perhaps, as one often sees them, to unite in one larger, better, brighter bubble than either had been before. Neither cares a tittle for its chance companion’s previous history, or for what the other bubbles say. ”

“ They moved from their luxurious apartment to a cheap hotel, thence to a cheaper one, thence to a boarding-house. The backward path was strewn with unsettled bills, and loans never to be repaid. Vane wrote spasmodically for the daily papers, and for such of the magazines as would still accept his work, and, on the pittance thus earned, and the generosity of Helen’s father, they contrived to exist, in a fashion, for something over two years. ”