Mabel Osgood Wright

“ A strange, but positive, fact about New York is that one may at one time be in it but a few hours and run across half the people of one's acquaintance, gathered from all parts of the country, and at another, wander about for weeks without seeing a familiar face.
I liked Bradford from the moment I shook hands with him. There is so much in the mere touching of hands. His neither crushed as if to compel, nor flopped equivocally, but said, as it enclosed yours in its bigness, "I am here, command me." ”

“ When I have not opened my desk or my garden book for some time, and the planting season, be it of spring or of autumn, as now, overtakes me unawares, I am always newly convinced that gardening is the truly religious life, for it implies a continual preparation for the future, a treading in the straight and narrow path that painful experience alone can mark, an absorption beyond compare, and the continual exercise of hope and love, but above all, of entire childlike faith. ”

“ He thought a few minutes, as if reasoning with himself, and then the big gray eyes filled with tears, a very rare occurrence, as he seemed to feel that he could not yield, and he said, trying very hard to steady his voice, "Favver, I truly can't, I _think it muvver inside, but you and I, we must say it Barbara," and I confess that my heart leaped with joy, and I begged Evan to let the matter end here. To be called, if it so may be, by one name from the beginning to the end of life by the only true lovers that can never be rivals, is bliss enough for any woman. ”

“ Would you select it for me?" and the big fellow swept the shop with an indefinite sort of gaze, as if buying candy for the universe would but feebly express his feelings.
"Certainly I will," replied Miss Lavinia, warming at once;—"but what kind of something?"
"I think,"—hesitating a trifle,—"a very good gown, and an ornament of some kind."
"Would she not prefer choosing the gown herself? People's tastes differ so much about clothing," ventured Miss Lavinia, willing, even anxious, to help the man, yet shrinking from the possibility of feminine criticism. ”

“ Even the feathered things about us are in this mood; their family life is over, the companionship of fall travel has not begun, and the woods are full of moulting birds choosing this separateness in preparation for the tension of new flight and its perils. Everything, in short, in wild nature has its corresponding note in our own humanity,—the sweating of the corn, the moulting of the bird, the contraction of the earth by frost, all have a kindred season or experience in the heart. ”

“ If any one wishes to feel the clutch and motive power of the Whirlpool let him go to the Mazarin any time between twelve-thirty and two o'clock. The streets themselves are surging with men, all hurrying first in one direction, then another, until it seems as if there either must be a fire somewhere, or else a riot afoot. The doors of the restaurant open and shut incessantly, corks pop, knives and forks rattle, everything is being served from a sandwich and a glass of beer to an elaborate repast with a wine to every course, while through and above it all the stress of business is felt. ”

“ Perhaps it may be very narrow and provincial, but to harbour other people's servants seems to me like inviting contagion and subjecting one's kitchen to all the evils of boarding house atmosphere.
I used to think last summer, when I saw the arrival of various men and maids belonging to guests of the Bluff Colony, that I should feel much more at ease in the presence of royalty, and that I could probably entertain Queen Alexandra at dinner with less shock to her nerves and traditions than one of these ladies' maids or gentlemen's gentlemen. ”

“ Sylvia and Horace were married under sunshine yesterday in the little chantry of the church that is used in winter and for week-day services. To-day the cold northeasterly storm has come, under cover of which August so often disappears and September enters the marshes upon the wings of low-flying plovers, to the discordant call of the first waterfowl of the return migration.
Mr. Latham came to the wedding. In fact, he has been here several times during the month. He is a well-built man, under sixty, dark and taciturn, and would be handsome but for the hard expression of his face. ”

“ I found out long ago that those who get the best return from their flower gardens were those who kept no gardeners, and it is the same way with the child garden; those who are too overbusy, irresponsible, ignorant, or rich to do without the orthodox nurse, never can know precisely what they lose. To watch a baby untrammelled with clothes, dimple, glow, and expand in its bath, is in an intense personal degree like watching, early of a June morning, the first opening bud of a rose that you have coaxed and raised from a mere cutting. ”

“ Evan, who had disappeared, returned at the right moment with his newspaper and two bulky tissue paper bundles all powdered with snow, one of which he gave to Miss Lavinia, the other to me. I knew their contents the moment I set eyes on them, and yet it was none the less a heart-warming surprise.
Down in a near-by market is a little florist's shop, so small that one might pass twenty times without noticing it; the man, a local authority, who has kept it for years, makes a specialty of the great long-stemmed single violets, whose fleeting fragrance no words may express. ”

“ Monty Bell has been dividing his week ends between the Ponsonby, Vanderveer, and Jenks-Smith households, yet he always is in the foreground when I have been to see Sylvia, even though I have tried to slip in between times in the morning.
I do not like this Monty Bell; he seems to be merely an eater of dinners and a cajoler of dames, such superficial chivalry of speech as he exhibits being only one of the many expedients that gain him the title of "socially indispensable" that the Whirlpoolers accord him. ”

“ I like that name that your Martin Cortright gives to New York. Before I went abroad I should have resented it bitterly, but the two months since my return have convinced me of its truth, which I have fought against for many years; for even the most staid of us who, either of choice or necessity, give the social vortex a wide berth, cannot escape from the unrest of it, or sight of the wreckage it from time to time gives forth. ”

“ Not for one minute in the day will its light rest on my garden, and finis is already written on it, and I see it an arid mud bank. I wonder if you can realize, you open-air Barbara, with your garden and fields and all space around you, how a city-bred woman, to whom crowds are more vital than nature, still loves her back yard. ”

“ Martin Cortright stayed to dinner, and afterward he, Miss Lavinia, father, and Evan sat down to a "real old-fashioned," serious game of whist! Of all things, to the fifth wheel, who is out of it, would not be in if she could, cannot learn, and prefers jackstraws to card games of any sort, an evening of serious whist is the most aggravating. They were too well matched to even enliven matters by squabbling or casting venomous glances at each other. Evan played with Martin Cortright, whose system he was absorbed in mastering, and he never spoke a word, and barely looked up. ”

“ Bradford may share the pleasant woman's talk of linen for table and bed, and other details of a bridal outfit.
We all missed Miss Lavinia when she left, that is, all but the boys, and they hailed the change with joy, as giving them another house to roam in and out of. How much of the joy of childhood that we so envy comes from their freedom from prejudice, the ability they have for adapting themselves. ”

“ Bradford relaxed completely, and pulling down a branch, buried her face in the blossoms, drawing long breaths.
"I've kept away from the garden all day," she said, "because I had some sewing to finish, so those unfortunate Hornblower children might begin the spring term at school to-morrow; and when I once smell the cherry flowers, my very bones ache to be out doors, and I'm not good for a thing but to potter about the garden from now on, until the strawberries show red, and everything settles down for summer. ”

“ I think that both Miss Lavinia and Martin Cortright dread the going back to their old existence, and yet I am not sure that either of them would consent to change it in any way, in spite of their growlings at the modern conditions of life in New York. They have learned to lean upon the very restrictions that cramp them, until the idea of cutting free seems as impossible as for the bulky woman to sever the stay-lace that at once suffocates and supports her. ”

“ Feeling assured that my boys were quite at their ease and not likely to balk and act like wild rabbits, as is sometimes the case with children when they find themselves among strangers, and seeing nothing that they would be likely to fall out of or into, except a great bowl of lemonade arranged in a bower that represented a well, we came away, Lavinia Dorman sniffing in the spectacle like a veteran war-horse scenting powder, and enjoying the gayety, as I myself should have done heartily if it had not been for the boys. ”

“ I, too, realize that the striving in certain quarters is no longer for home and love and happy times, but for something new, even if it is merely for the sake of change, and that this infection of social unrest is quickly spreading downward from the Bluffs, touching the surface of our little community, if not yet troubling its depths. ”

“ In the white cribs in the alcove the same change comes, bright eyes, hair, cheeks, and lips lie blended in the shadow, the only sound is the even breath of night, and when you press your lips behind the ear where a curl curves and neck and garments meet, there comes a little fragrance born of sweet flesh and new flannel, and the only motion is that of the half-open hand that seems to recognize and closes about your fingers as a vine to its trellis, or as a sleeping bird clings to its perch. ”

“ Where do we belong? Where is our home? Can people who have once loved each other forget their children and throw them off so? Does God allow it? You must have cared for father once, for I remember when I was a little girl you told me that you called me Sylvia, to have my name as nearly like father's—Sylvester—as possible. ”

“ It was moonlight, and I wanted him to see the new iris that were in bloom along the wild walk, dilate upon the game of leap-frog that the automobile played, and—well—there is a great deal to say when Evan has been away that cannot be thought of indoors or be spoken hurriedly in the concise, compact, public terms in which one orders a meal. Conversation is only in part made of words, its subtilties are largely composed of touch and silence. ”

“ If any one wishes to see brave men and true, simply come to a fire with Evan and me in our New York.
We might have stood there on our garbage pedestals half the night if Horace Bradford had not remembered that he must catch the midnight express, glanced at his watch, found that it was already nearly half-past ten, and realized that he had left his grip at Miss Lavinia's. Consequently we dismounted and pushed our way home. ”

“ Evan, who had Miss Lavinia in charge, was alert, and rather, it seemed to me, on the defensive; but though Martin asked questions, he was comfortably soothing, and seemed to take in much at a glance.
That short man with the fine head, white hair and beard, aquiline nose, and intense eyes is not only a poet, but the first American critic of pure literature. He lives out of town, but comes to the city daily for a certain stimulus. The petite woman with the pretty colour who has crossed the room to speak to him is the best known writer of New England romance. ”

“ Imagine the assurance of the twenty-two-year-old Ponsonby girl, who came dashing up all of a fume last Saturday morning, when I was comfortably seated on the old tea tray, transplanting a flat of my best ostrich plume asters, and begging me, her mother being away, to chaperon her to a ball game, in a town not far off up the railroad, with harmless, pink-eyed Teddy Tice, one of her brother's college mates. ”

“ Nature is always right, and after the usual breezy argument sends Summer, her garments a bit storm-tattered, perchance, back to her own.
The ill wind that dashed the tall auratum lilies in the garden to the ground, stripped the clinging fingers of the sweet peas from their trellis, and decapitated the heavy-headed dahlias, has blown me good, held me indoors awhile, sent me to my attic confessional once more, with conscience for priest, and the twins for acolytes, though they presently turned catechists with an entirely new series of questions. ”

“ Not pain, not temper, but the unconscious yearning for companionship, for mother-love, is oftener the motive of the pitiful cry. Why should it be denied? The mother bird broods her young in the nest at twilight, and the father bird sings a lullaby to both. The kittens luxuriously sup themselves to sleep with the warm mother flesh responding to their seeking paws. In wild life I know not an animal who does not in some way soothe her young to sleep. Why should the human child, the son of man, be forced to live without the dream memories that linger about happy sleeping times? ”

“ When Horace Bradford drove homeward the afternoon of the fête, he was in a brown study, having no realization of time or place until the wise horse turned in at the barnyard gate, and after standing a moment by his usual hitching post, looked over his shoulder and gave a whinny to attract his master's attention. Then Horace started up, shook off his lethargy, and hurried to the porch, where his mother stood waiting, to give her the roses, and Sylvia's message. ”