Holworthy Hall

“ The only reason a man ought to give up that catalogue of yours is because he wants to! Because it's worth while!”
“It always has seemed to me,” said Cunningham, “that it's impossible to judge whether it's worth while or not. Now, I'm a lawyer, so that I see these things from a legal view-point. Marriage is a species of contract. I fail to see why it shouldn't be in the form of other contracts. Then it wouldn't be dangerous. Suppose two people drew up a formal agreement, and specified exactly what they would do, and what they wouldn't do. ”

“ HIS friends held that Cunningham was at least fifty years old when he was born. According to that very plausible theory he was now about eighty-five; good looking, with that sort of impersonal attractiveness which inspires respect long before it arouses admiration; and possessed of enough intelligence to make him feared not only in courts of law and equity, but also at the modest club where his chief delight lay in spoiling, by utter and relentless logic, the other fellow's epigram. ”

“ That's all the individuality a married man has! Granted that it's a special privilege—a man has to have some compensation, hasn't he? And the woman isn't doing anything more than to shift the responsibility of her support from one house to another. I can't see how Ned Rayburn's lucky—on the contrary!”
The young actor touched his arm. “Aren't you forgetting,” he asked, “that occasionally—just once in a while, you know—people have a sort of what you might call a—an attachment for each other? Don't you count that in? Ned said——”
“That isn't why people marry!” ”

“ The voluntary habits I mentioned aren't so any longer—each one is a stripe of the convict's uniform. I'm chained to the city, to an office, to a court, to a club, to a room. When I get back to town to-night I'll feel like a sneak-thief—or like a man who's broken his parole. I shouldn't have come out here. I don't know why I shouldn't have, but the routine has a summons that's as dictatorial as a keeper's forefinger. That's what I meant.”
“But surely,” she said, a little troubled, “there must be plenty of recreations. ”

“ Why, some people marry for the same reason that some people fight. On impulse. The consequents are overshadowed by the antecedents. Now, the men who marry earliest all have nervous temperaments. That's demonstrated by statistics. They see a pretty face, or a good figure, or they go to a dance, or to a week-end party and get home-cooking—I'll venture to say that those are the proximate causes of nine marriages out of ten. I'm willing to wager that the last one hits close to Ned Rayburn.”
He glanced across at Stephenson, whose expression was wooden. ”

“ My point is that after a man's lived around places like this for a few years, associating with a lot of ribald loafers—present company especially—the change is bound to benefit him.”
“Meaning, of course,” said Currier, “that no matter which way you figure it, Rayburn's in luck.”
“Exactly,” agreed Stephenson, acquiring the last of the horseshoe rolls, and buttering it unctuously. “I mean that a man who's free-lanced around lower New York for eight or ten years is going to be uplifted and improved by any woman. ”

“ One of the men at his office had some time mentioned Crestwood, twenty miles out, where woods and fields were in abundance, and the air was pure, and the silence gratifying.
“There's no use—you've got to get a perspective,” he said in the smoking-car. “You can't make comparisons if all you've got is a horizon—no foreground.” The train started. “Good old Ned,” said Cunningham reflectively. “I wonder if he'll get his money's worth.” ...
FROM the Crestwood station, a sorry enough building on the flank of an abortive real-estate development, he had gone on to the woods ”

“ We must have hit a sore spot. He likes Ned as much as we do. You stay here a minute—I'll fetch him back, and we'll straighten it out. And then, for Heaven's sake, talk about the war——”
The doorman, however, declared that Mr. Cunningham had gone.
WHEN Cunningham emerged from the door of the club, and strode wrathfully along Twentieth Street to Fourth Avenue, the disorganization of his own thoughts appalled him. “Damned hypocrites!” he said, referring to his friends; and then, “Damned hypocrite!”—referring to himself. Poor old Ned Rayburn was in his mind ”

“ And while we're enjoying ourselves in what's left of Bohemia, poor old Ned Rayburn—of all men in the world—has got the sun in his eyes, and he's going off to live in Arcady!”
“Tuckahoe,” corrected Currier. “They're taking a furnished bungalow.” He helped himself plenteously to the strawberry-jam long since charged on another check.
“A FURNISHED bungalow,” repeated Cunningham softly, as he polished his glasses. “A man with the artistic sense of Ned Rayburn living in a furnished bungle-house! It's inconceivable! Leather pillows with Indian heads on 'em ... ”

“ The outline she saw was that of a man who, with very little training, would be both powerful and graceful; it wasn't the outline of a weakling. She drew slightly back into the protection of the alders, and waited. ”

“ And 'The End of a Perfect Day' always open on the piano. There's probably a China-silk piano scarf on it, with cut-glass vases, and a majolica rose-jar. And the whole place smells of cabbage——”
“We were just saying,” interrupted Stephenson, bending toward him, “that this is about the best thing that could possibly happen to Rayburn. ”

“ In the sense of their relation toward other men—you, for example. You've proved that. You're not natural! You don't live, or act, or eat, or play like natural people. All you know about is one tiny niche. ”

“ He begins by discounting the remainder of his existence at about ninety per cent., and in return he gets a permanent trespasser on his individuality. Why, I've heard you arguing suffrage—the very last refuge of the American male citizen! ”