“ Sloane, having decided to treat himself to a private secretary and suffered dreadful mischance in three successive experiments, had heard of Theodore's situation and his merits; had furthermore recognized in him the son of an early and intimate friend, and had finally offered him the very comfortable position he now occupies. There is a decided incongruity between Theodore as a man—as Theodore, in fine—and the dear fellow as the intellectual agent, confidant, complaisant, purveyor, pander—what you will—of a battered old cynic and dilettante—a worldling if there ever was one. ”

“ The manly art of wagoning is not pursued vigorously at Brant Beach. The roads are too heavy back from the water, and the drive is confined to a narrow strip of wet sand along the shore; so carriages are few, and the pony-chaise became a distinguished element at once. Salsbury and Burnham whirled past it in their light trotting-wagons at a furious pace, and looked hard at the two young ladies in passing, but without eliciting even the smallest glance from them in return.
"Confounded distingué-looking girls, and all that," owned Ned, "but, aw, fearfully unconscious of a fellow!" ”

“ Coming events do what we all know with their shadows. My noble fate is, perhaps, not far off. I already feel throughout my person a magnificent languor—as from the possession of many dollars. Or is it simply my sense of well-being in this perfectly appointed house? Is it simply the contact of the highest civilization I have known? At all events, the place is of velvet, and my only complaint of Mr. Sloane is that, instead of an old widower, he's not an old widow (or a young maid) , so that I might marry him, survive him, and dwell forever in this rich and mellow home. ”

“ Both were neatly habited in plain travelling-dresses and cloaks of black and white plaid, and both seemed utterly unconscious of the battery of eyes and eye-glasses that enfiladed them from the whole length of the piazza as they passed.
"Who are they?" asked Salsbury; "I don't know them."
"Nor I," said Burnham; "but they look like people to know. They must be somebody."
Half an hour later the hotel-office was besieged by a score of young men, all anxious for a peep at the last names upon the register. It is needless to say that our friends were not in the crowd. ”

“ The impulse which now drew us together was only the unconscious souvenir of an earlier acquaintance, for we had met before. With the vision of the Italian city, which came distinctly to my eyes at that moment, came also to my mind every detail of an incident which had long since passed entirely from my thoughts.
It was during the Turin carnival, in 1875, that I happened to stop over for a day and a night, on my way down from Paris to Venice. The festival was uncommonly dreary, for the air was chilly, the sky gray and gloomy, and there was a total lack of spontaneity in the popular spirit. ”

“ As we rattled up to the tavern in the village, I perceived from the top of the coach, in the twilight, Theodore beneath the porch, scanning the vehicle, with all his amiable disposition in his eyes. He has grown older, of course, in these five years, but less so than I had expected. His is one of those smooth, unwrinkled souls that keep their bodies fair and fresh. As tall as ever, moreover, and as lean and clean. How short and fat and dark and debauched he makes one feel! ”

“ But if we should really clash, the situation would be warm! I wonder, as it is, that Theodore keeps his patience with me. His education since we parted should tend logically to make him despise me. He has studied, thought, suffered, loved—loved those very plain sisters and nieces. Poor me! how should I be virtuous? I have no sisters, plain or pretty!—nothing to love, work for, live for. My dear Theodore, if you are going one of these days to despise me and drop me—in the name of comfort, come to the point at once, and make an end of our state of tension.
He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. ”

“ I pass for a clever, accomplished, capable, good-natured fellow, who can do anything if he would only try. I am supposed to be rather cultivated, to have latent talents. When I was younger I used to find a certain entertainment in the spectacle of human affairs. I liked to see men and women hurrying on each other's heels across the stage. But I am sick and tired of them now; not that I am a misanthrope, God forbid! They are not worth hating. I never knew but one creature who was, and her I went and loved. To be consistent, I ought to have hated my mother, and now I ought to detest Theodore. ”

“ There was no question but that the stranger was a man-of-war—and an ironclad, at that—provided with a formidable ram.
"I thought so," suddenly ejaculated the admiral: "Now show him who we are."
The English flag had been replaced by the red-yellow-and-red bars of Spain. Down came the red cross from the peak of the "Franklin;" and then, not only there, but from every mast-head, floated the stars and stripes.
A puff of smoke from the Spaniard—a whirr, a shriek, and a solid shot struck the water, having passed entirely over the American frigate.
"He fires at long range!" ”

“ In every son of woman there are two men—the practical man and the dreamer. We live for our dreams—but, meanwhile, we live by our wits. When the dreamer is a poet, the other fellow is an artist. Theodore, at bottom, is only a man of taste. If he were not destined to become a high priest among moralists, he might be a prince among connoisseurs. He plays his part, therefore, artistically, with spirit, with originality, with all his native refinement. How can Mr. Sloane fail to believe that he possesses a paragon? ”

“ Such a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.
The sight of human suffering soon blunts the sensibilities of any one who lives with it, so that he is at last able to look upon it with no stronger feeling than that of helplessness. Resigned to the inevitable, he is no longer impressed by the woes of the individual. He looks upon the illness, wounds, and death of the soldier as a part of the lot of all combatants, and comes to consider him an insignificant unit of the great mass of men. ”

“ The watchers at the signal station looked at each other in astonishment, and eagerly waited for the fog to lift.
An hour later, the mist began to clear away. The sight that met the eyes of the spectators was one never to be forgotten.
The "Numancia" was evidently ashore on the East bank. Her fore and mainmasts were gone, and clouds of dark smoke were lazily ascending from her forecastle. Suddenly, the whole ship seemed to burst into a sheet of flame, there was a deep explosion, the air was filled with flying fragments, and a blackened hull was all that was left of the proud man-of-war. ”

“ Ned Salsbury was no more the man to exhibit curiosity than Charley Burnham was the man to join in a scramble for anything under the sun. They had educated their emotions clear down, out of sight, and piled upon them a mountain of well-bred inertia.
But, somehow or other, these fellows who take no trouble are always the first to gain the end. A special Providence seems to aid the poor, helpless creatures. So, while the crowd still pressed at the office-desk, Jerry Swayne, the head clerk, happened to pass directly by the piazza where the inert ones sat, and, raising a comical eye, saluted them. ”

“ Neither need we picture the dismay of the citizens of New York when they came to realize the fearful damage which had been inflicted upon their city. Fully one-half of the town lay in ruins. The metropolis was the metropolis no longer. The proudest city of the Great Republic had been at the mercy of a conqueror, and, as if this humiliation were not deep enough, she owed her preservation from utter destruction to the guns of an insignificant Republic of South America. ”

“ Sloane is so thankful at having escaped from the lake with his life that he looks upon me as a preserver and protector. Confound it all; it's a bore! But one thing is certain, it can't last forever. Admit that he has cast Theodore out and taken me in. He will speedily discover that he has made a pretty mess of it, and that he had much better have left well enough alone. He likes my reading and writing now, but in a month he will begin to hate them. He will miss Theodore's better temper and better knowledge—his healthy impersonal judgment. ”

“ It's not his fault, after all, that he fancies himself a great little man. How are you to judge of the stature of mankind when men have forever addressed you on their knees? Peace and joy to his innocent fatuity! He believes himself the most rational of men; in fact, he's the most superstitious. He fancies himself a philosopher, an inquirer, a discoverer. He has not yet discovered that he is a humbug, that Theodore is a prig, and that I am an adventurer. He prides himself on his good manners, his urbanity, his knowing a rule of conduct for every occasion in life. ”

“ You will be a stupid reasoner, and an indifferent lover, if you don't put for the engine over those platform cars, as fast as your legs will carry you. You can run a mile, the length of the train, in ten minutes. Therefore, you reach Abscissa when the engine does, or in ten minutes—ten minutes sooner than if you had lazily sat down upon the rear car and talked politics with the brakeman. You have diminished the time by one half. You have added your speed to that of the locomotive to some purpose. ”

“ Theodore's apparent success proves it to be much, as well as the old man's satisfaction. It is a part; he has to simulate. He has to "make believe" a little—a good deal; he has to put his pride in his pocket and send his conscience to the wash. He has to be accommodating—to listen and pretend and flatter; and he does it as well as many a worse man—does it far better than I. I might bully the old man, but I don't think I could humor him. ”

“ And to lie at length upon the tawny sand, watching, through half-closed eyes, the heaving waves, that mount against a dark blue sky wherein great silvery masses of cloud float idly on, whiter than the sunlit sails that fade and grow and fade along the horizon, while some fair damsel sits close by, reading ancient ballads of a simple metre, or older legends of love and romance—tell me, my eater of the fashionable lotos, is not this a diversion well worth your having? ”

“ And then I declared that I must go up and look at poor Theodore.
The bonhomme still kept my hands. "I wish very much that I could get you to be as fond of me as you are of poor Theodore."
"Ah, don't talk about fondness, Mr. Sloane. I don't deal much in that article."
"Don't you like my secretary?"
"Not as he deserves."
"Nor as he likes you, perhaps?"
"He likes me more than I deserve."
"Well, Max," my host pursued, "we can be good friends all the same. We don't need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment. We are men, aren't we?—men of sublime good sense." ”

“ But Theodore is, after all, in duty bound to give a man a long rope in these matters. His own rope is one of the longest. He reads Voltaire with Mr. Sloane, and Emerson in his own room. He is the stronger man of the two; he has the larger stomach. Mr. Sloane delights, of course, in Voltaire, but he can't read a line of Emerson. Theodore delights in Emerson, and enjoys Voltaire, though he thinks him superficial. It appears that since we parted in Paris, five years ago, his conscience has dwelt in many lands. ”