Sara Jeannette Duncan

“ Don't hurry yourselves. They'll keep, you know—they've kept a good long while already. Now you, madam," said Brother Eusebius to Mrs. Portheris, "have never had the influenza, I know. It only attacks people advanced in life."
"Indeed I have," replied that lady. "Twice."
"Is that so! Well, you never would have had it if you'd been protected with this liqueur of ours. It's death and burial on influenza," and Brother Eusebius shook the bottle.
"I consider," said Mrs. Portheris solemnly, "that eucalyptus in another form saved my life. ”

“ Momma and I, looking at our fellow travellers, at once decided that the Misses Bingham had been a little hasty. The fat gentleman, who wore a straw hat very far back, and meant to enjoy himself, was certainly our fellow-citizen. So was his wife, and brother-in-law. So were a bride and bridegroom on the box seat—nothing less than the best of everything for an American honeymoon—and so was a solitary man with a short cut bristly beard, a slouch hat, a pink cotton shirt, and a celluloid collar. ”

“ Peters was the tourist agent who had undertaken to bless our comings and goings. I said nothing whatever to poppa, but I felt a glow of conscious triumph when I thought of Mr. Malt.
We stood and realised Paris on the pavement while the fiacre turned in from the road and drew up for us. I had every intention of being fascinated and so had momma. We had both heard often and often that good Americans when they die go to Paris, and that prepares one for a good deal in this life. ”

“ Perhaps it is the ghost of a genius that has failed of reincarnation, and inspires the weeds and the leaf-shadows instead. Thinking of it, one remembers only an almond tree in flower, that grew beside a ruined arch by the wayside—both quite alone in the sunlight—and perhaps of a meek, young, marble Cecilia, unquestioningly prostrate, submissive to the axe.
We were on our way to the Catacombs, momma, the Senator, and Mrs. Portheris in one carriage, R. Dod, Mr. Mafferton, Isabel, and I in the other. ”

“ Doesn't it ever make you tired to hear yourselves called subjects? Don't you ever want to be free and equal, like us? Trot out the truth now—the George Washington article!"
"Mister," said Mr. Pabbley, "I flatter myself that Canadians are a good deal like United States folks already, and I don't mind congratulating both our nations on the resemblance. But I'm bound to add that, while I would wish to imitate the American people in many ways still further, I wouldn't be like you personally, no, not under any circumstances nor in any respect." ”

“ The wall threw a new moon of shadow on the west, and there the sun struck down sharply and made splendid the dyes in the women's clothes, and turned the Italian soldiers' buttons into flaming jewels. And again, as we stared, the applause went round and up, from the yellow sand below to the blue sky above, and when we looked bewildered down into the Arena for the victorious gladiator, and saw a tumbling clown with a painted face instead, the illusion was only half destroyed. ”

“ Poppa says we are not, under any circumstances, to mention it more than once, but that we might as well explode the fallacy that there is anything like it in America. There isn't. Our cerulean is very beautifully blue, but in Italy one discovers by contrast that it is an intellectual blue, filled with light, high, provocative. The sky that bends over Tuscany is the very soul of blue, deep, soft, intense, impenetrable—the sky that one sees in those little casual bits of landscape behind the shoulders of pre-Raphaelite Saints and Madonnas ”

“ I know Mrs. Portheris is an old lady of no family, because she's a connection of ours, you see. What about Isabel? Can't you tell the least bit?"
"How can a fellow? She blushes just as much when he speaks to her as when I do."
"But are you quite sure," I asked delicately, "whether Mr. Mafferton is—interested?"
"There's the worst kind of danger of it," Dicky replied impressively. "I don't know whether I ought to tell you, but the fact is Mafferton's just got the sack—I beg your pardon—just been congéed himself. They say she was an American and it was a bad case; she behaved most unfeelingly." ”

“ CHAPTER IV.
"If there's one thing I hate," said Senator Wick several times in the discussion of our plans, "it's to see a citizen of the United States going round advertising himself. If you analyse it, it's a mean thing to do, for it's no more a virtue to be born American than a fault to be born anything else. I'm proud of my nationality and my income is a source of satisfaction to me, but I don't intend to brandish either of them in the face of Europe." ”

“ Portheris took my arm. We were not people to lean on each other in the ordinary vicissitudes of life, and even under the circumstances I was aware that Mrs. Portheris was a great deal to support, but there was comfort in every pound of her. At last a faint light foreshadowed itself in the direction of Dicky's disappearance, and grew stronger, and was resolved into a candle and a young man, and Mr. Dod, very much paler than when he left, was with us again. Mrs. Portheris and I started apart as if scientifically impelled, and exclaimed simultaneously, "Where is Brother Demetrius?" ”

“ Underneath was a companion sketch of the restitution of Jonah, in perfect order, by the whale, which had, nevertheless, grown considerably stouter in the interval, while an amiable stranger reclined in an arbor, with his hand under his head, and looked on.
"As a child your intelligence promised well," said Dicky; "that is Jonah, though not of the Revised Version. I don't think Bible stories ought to be illustrated, do you, Mrs. Portheris? It has such a bad effect on the imagination." ”

“ Momma was enjoying herself.
Poppa said he didn't know that he had been relying much on the poplar feature of the scenery, and returned to his weary search for American telegrams in a London daily paper.
"Dear me," momma ejaculated, "I never supposed I should see them doing it! And right along the line of the railway, too!"
"See them doing it!" I repeated, searching the landscape.
"The women working in the fields, darling love. Garnering the grain, all in that nice moderate shade of blue-electric, shouldn't you call it? There—there's another! No, you can't see her now. France is fascinating!" ”

“ Poppa invited them all, by pantomime, to walk up and have an octopus, and when the crowd began to gather from the side alleys, and the enthusiasm grew too promiscuous, he bought the barrel outright and watched the carnival from the middle of the canal. He often speaks of his enjoyment of the Venetian octopus, eaten in cold blood, without pepper, salt, or vinegar; and the effect, when I am not there, is awe-stricken.
Next morning we took a gondola for the station, and slipped through the gold and opal silence of the dawn on the canals away from Venice. ”

“ We met poppa on the Germanic gangway, his hat on the back of his head and one finger in each of his waistcoat pockets, an attitude which, with him, always betokens concern. The vessel was at that stage of departure when the people who have been turned off are feeling injured that it should have been done so soon, and apparently only the weight of poppa's personality on its New York end kept the gangway out. As we drove up he appeared to lift his little finger and three dishevelled navigators darted upon the cab. ”

“ What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was the conspicuous part in municipal politics played by that little old brown river Arno. In most places the riparian feature of the landscape is not insisted on—you have usually to go to the suburbs to find it, but in Pisa it is a sort of main street, with the town sitting comfortably and equally on each side of it looking on. Momma and I both liked the idea of a river in town scenery, and thought it might be copied with advantage in America, it afforded such a good excuse for bridges. ”

“ The Senator felt so well acquainted with it that he hesitated about buying a descriptive pamphlet. "They want to sell a stranger too much information in this country," he said. "The meanest American intelligence is equal to stepping into an elevator and stepping out again." But he bought one nevertheless, and was particularly pleased with it, not only because it was the cheapest thing in Paris at five cents, but because, as he said himself, it contained an amount of enthusiasm not usually available at any price. ”

“ Momma wishes me to state that the word Italy, in any language, will for ever be associated in her mind with the journey from Genoa to Pisa. We had our own lunch basket, so no baneful anticipation of cutlets fried in olive oil marred the perfect satisfaction with which we looked out of the windows. One window, almost the whole way, opened on a low embankment which seemed a garden wall. Olives and lemon trees grew beyond it and dropped over, and it was always dipping in the sunlight to show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside, white and remote ”

“ Now the Pompeii folks didn't know a saint or a bishop by sight, and Jupiter, as Aunt Caroline says, was never properly qualified to interfere. That's how it was, I presume. I don't suppose the people of Naples take much stock in the laws of nature; they don't have to, with Januarius in a drawer. And real estate keeps booming right along."
"You have an extraordinary way of putting things," remarked Mrs. Portheris to her nephew. "Very extraordinary. But I am glad to hear that you agree with me," and she looked as if she did not understand momma's acquiescent smile. ”

“ Alessandro Bebbini smiled—an olive flash of pity and amusement. "I make not the shava, Signore," he said, "I am the courier—for your kind dispositione I am here."
"You should never judge foreigners by their appearance, Alexander," rebuked momma.
"Well, Mr. Bebbini," said the Senator, "I guess I've got to apologise to you. You see they told me inside there that I should probably find a—a tonsorial artist out here on the steps"—poppa never minds telling a story to save people's feelings. "But you haven't convinced me," he continued, "that I've got any use for a courier." ”

“ Once a year the present Lady Mafferton invites Mrs. Portheris to tea, and I know they discuss my theory of engagements in a critical spirit. We have never seen either Miss Nancy or Miss Cora Bingham again, and I should have forgotten the names of Mr. Pabbley and Mr. Hinkson by this time if I had not written them down in earlier chapters. Arthur and I have not yet made up our minds to another visit to England. We have several friends there, however, whom we appreciate exceedingly, in spite, as we often say to one another, of their absurd and deplorable accent. ”

“ It is too business-like to be sentimental, and too sentimental to be business-like. I'm sorry to seem disobliging, but I really couldn't make up my mind to marry a gentleman for his ancestors who are dead, even if he was willing to marry me for my income which may disappear. Poppa is very speculative. But I know there's a certain percentage of Americans who think a count with a family seat is about the only thing worth bringing away from Europe, now that we manufacture so much for ourselves, and if I meet any of them I'll bear you in mind. ”

“ Ten minutes later the carriage doors were opening upon Paris, and the Senator's eagle eye was searching the crowded platform for this official. Our vague idea was that the interpreter would be a conspicuous and permanent object like a nickle-in-the-slot machine, automatically arranged to open his arms to tourists presenting the right tickets, and emit conversation. When we finally detected him, by his cap, he was shifting uneasily in the midst of a crowd of inquirers. His face was pale, his beard pointed, his expression that of a person constantly interrupted in many languages. ”

“ Nothing else actually transpired during the afternoon, though there were times when other events seemed as precipitant, to most of us, as upon the tossing Atlantic, and we made port without having realised anything about the Bodensee, except that we would rather not be on it.
Neuhausen was the port, but Schaffhausen was of course the place, two or three dusty miles along a river the identity of which revealed itself to Mrs. Portheris through the hotel omnibus windows as an inspiration. "Do we all fully understand," she demanded, "that we are looking upon the Rhine?" ”

“ The freedom from conventional restraint which characterises American society very seldom extends to married gentlemen.
We had to wait twenty minutes for the other party, on account of their British objection to anybody's dust. Even Mr. Mafferton looked quelled when they arrived, and Isabel quite abject, while Mrs. Portheris wore that air of justification which no circumstance could impair, which was particularly her own. She would not sit down. "It gives these people a claim on you," she said. "I did not come here to run up an hotel bill, but to see Pompeii. Pompeii I demand to see." ”