“ For this reason Lucy Putnam was wise enough to ask him something about Mary every so often.
Now, the question arises: Why should Lucy Putnam, or any other girl, take any interest in a man who was so thoroughly bashful that his trembling efforts to converse made the light quivering aspen look like a ten-ton obelisk for calmness? The reason was, and is, that woman has the same eye for babies and men. ”

“ Some people thought that if she hadn't to feed her cat she never would go home. But the cat was all she had, she used to say, and nobody knew the comfort it was to her. Yet, for all this, there were hours and seasons when, obliged to stay in the house, it was intolerably dreary there, and she longed for companionship. "Some one with an interest," she said. "Some one who loves the same things that I do, who cares for me, and for my pursuits. Some one like Sophia Maybury. Oh! how I should have liked to spend my last days with Sophia! What keeps Dr. Maybury alive so, I can't imagine. ”

“ James Trottingham Minton had a cousin who lived in St. Louis. "Cousin Mary," Lucy Putnam discovered by a process of elimination, was the one topic on which the reticent Mr. Minton could become talkative. Mary was his ideal, almost. Let a girl broach the weather, he grew halt of speech; should she bring up literature, his replies were almost inane; let her seek to show that she kept abreast of the times, and talk of politics—then Jimmy seemed to harbor a great fear in his own soul. But give him the chance to make a few remarks about his cousin Mary and he approached eloquence. ”

“ She laughed, in spite of the unpaid bills.
"Why can't you put clever things like that into your stories, Jimmy, dear?"
"As if I didn't!" he retorted. "But don't step on my idea and squash it while it's in the soft-shell-crab stage. As I said, I was thinking: there is just one thing we can give the world odds on and beat it out of sight. And that thing is our long suit—our specialty."
"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.
"Oh—yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. ”

“ That man, George, crippled as he is, lives on next to nothing. I don't believe he has two hundred dollars a year."
"Well, we could give him twelve hundred and not miss it and then give the same sum to Widow Clausen. She can barely keep alive."
"And there's another thing I'd do," said Mrs. Grimes. "If we kept a carriage I would never ride up alone from the station or for pleasure. I would always find some poor or infirm person to go with me. How people can be so mean about their horses and carriages as some rich people are is beyond my comprehension." ”

“ Of course an afternoon tea is not to be taken seriously, and I hold that any kind of conversation goes, as long as it is properly vacuous and irrelevant.
One meets many kinds of afternoon teas—the bored, the bashful, the intense, and once in a while the interesting, but for pure delight there is nothing quite equals the gusher. She is generally very pretty. Nature insists upon compensations. ”

“ Grimes, "that people like us really ought to have large wealth, for we know how to use it rightly."
"I often think of that," answered George. "If I know my own soul I long to do good. It makes my heart bleed to see the misery about us, misery I am absolutely unable to relieve. I am sure that if I really had a million dollars I should not want to squander it on mere selfish pleasure, nor would you. The greatest happiness any one can have is in making others happy ”

“ To put it briefly, it's an Intelligence Office for College graduates where they may go for the purpose of getting a job, just as our cooks, and butlers and valets and the rest do. If there's money in securing a place at good wages for the ladies who burn our steaks and promote indigestion for us, and for the gentlemen who keep our trousers pressed and wear out our linen, I don't see why there wouldn't be money in an institution which did the same thing for the struggling young bachelor of arts who is thrown out of the arms of Alma Mater on to the hands of a cold and unappreciative world. ”

“ It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.
"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."
"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. ”

“ You need not regard considerations of prudence. You can give free rein to your feelings and bestow your bounty with reckless profusion. You obtain almost all the pleasure of large giving without any cost. You feel nearly as happy as if you were actually doing the good deeds which are the children of your fancy.
George Grimes and his wife had considered so often the benevolences they would like to undertake if they had a million dollars that they could have named them all at a moment's notice without referring to a memorandum. ”

“ Putnam said good-naturedly, "of course I haven't any objections to make. Seems to me that's a matter to be settled between you and Lucy."
Jimmy smiled confidentially.
"I suppose you're right, Mr. Putnam. But, you see, I've never had the nerve to say anything about it to her."
"Tut, tut. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all. What's the matter with you, young man? In my day, if a fellow wanted to marry a girl he wouldn't go and tell her father. He'd marry her first and then ask the old man where they should live." ”

“ How would you go about getting him a job, Mr. Idiot?"
"Bill ought to go into the publishing business," said the Idiot. "He was cut out for a book-agent. He has a physique which, to begin with, would command respectful attention for anything he might have to say concerning the wares he had to sell. He seems to have, from your brief description of him, that suavity of manner which would surely secure his admittance into the houses of the elite, and his sense of humor I judge to be sufficiently highly developed to enable him to make a sale wherever he felt there was the remotest chance. ”

“ My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day—an hour—a minute!"
She pretended to take him seriously.
"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"
"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door." ”

“ It would be better though if he were a man of fine presence. If he's big and genial, as you suggest, he can carry off his deficiencies in personal pulchritude."
The Doctor flushed a trifle. "Oh, Bill isn't so plain," he observed airily. "There's none of your sissy beauty about Bill, I grant you, but—oh, well"—here the Doctor twirled his mustache complacently.
"I should think the place for Bill would be on the trolley," sneered the Bibliomaniac.
"No, sir," returned the Idiot. "Never. Geniality never goes on the trolley. ”

“ Maybury, "perhaps I shall get used to it." From which it will be seen that Julia's efforts after all were not particularly successful. But if Mrs. Cairnes had been lonely before Mrs. Maybury came, Mrs. Maybury was intolerably lonely, having come; the greater part of the time, Allida being in the kitchen, or out herself, and no one in the house but the sunshine, the cat, and the bird; and she detested cats, and had a shudder if one touched her. However, this was Julia's cat, this great black and white evil spirit, looking like an imp of darkness; she would be kind to it if it didn't touch her. ”

“ Jimmy thought of Romeo, and Lucy thought of—Romeo, let us say. When a young man and a young woman, who are the least bit inclined one to another, witness Shakespeare's great educative effort, the young woman can not help imagining herself leaning over the balcony watching the attempts of the young man to clamber up the rope ladder. ”

“ If a Valedictorian comes into the University Intelligence Office and applies for a job we'll put him through a third degree examination and if we discover in him those restful qualities which go to the making of a good plumber, we'll set about finding him a job in a plumbing establishment. If a Greek Salutatorian in search of a position has the sweep of arm and general uplift of manner that indicates a useful career as a window-washer, we will put him in communication with those who need just such a person. ”

“ It isn't healthy to sleep with closed doors."
"Healthy! Healthy! I don't hear anything else from morning till night when I'm in the house."
"You can't hear very much of it, then."
"I should think, Sophia Maybury, you wanted to live forever!" [Pg 1650]
"Goodness knows I don't!" cried Mrs. Maybury, bursting into tears. And that night she shut her bedroom door and opened the window, and sneezed worse than ever all day afterward, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Cairnes had put all her cherished plants into the dining-room alcove.
"I can't imagine what has changed Julia so," sighed Mrs. Maybury. ”

“ Putnam," Jimmy asked, "why can't you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it's all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it'll all be arranged and understood."
"Le' me see. Didn't I read a poem or something at school about some one who hadn't sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn't her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven't courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have spunk." ”

“ Grimes laughed bitterly.
"That's always the way with those people. They are the worst beggars! When a lot of folks get together and start a church it is almost indecent for them to come running around to ask other folks to support it. I have half a notion not to give them a cent."
"Not even for Mr. Borrow's salary?"
"Certainly not! Half the clergymen in the United States get less than a thousand dollars a year; why can't he do as the rest do? Am I to be called upon to support a lot of poor preachers? ”

“ Tom said mentally: "I guess she did not hear it all, at least."
"I know," she went on, "that I was brought up on a narrow plane, and any sort of gambling seems wicked."
"But at first you would not play cards at all, and then you learned euchre. All games of cards look alike to me."
"I suppose they do, but euchre is a simple, interesting pastime; whist is a scientific—a—a—mental—exercise, developing the mind, and so forth, while poker cheats people out of their money,—at least, they lose money they ought to use other ways,—or else they win some and then have ill-gotten gains, which is worse." ”

“ Cleverness was the name of the new requirement, and Jimaboy's gift was glaringly sentimental. When you open your magazine at "The Contusions of Peggy, by James Augustus Jimaboy," you are justly indignant when you find melodrama and predetermined pathos instead of the clever clowneries which the sheer absurdity of the author's signature predicts.
"Item," said Jimaboy, jotting it down in his notebook while Isobel hung over the back of his chair: "It's a perilous thing to make people cry when they are out for amusement. ”

“ I think cards are wicked! And that's enough for me!"
"Well!" cried Mrs. Maybury, then in great dudgeon. "I'm not a member of the old East Church in good and regular standing for forty years to be told what's right and what's wrong by any one now!"
"If you're in good and regular standing, then the church is very lax in its discipline, Sophia; that's all I've got to say."
"But, Julia, things have been very much liberalized of late years. The minister's own daughter has been to dancing-school." ”

“ When you meet a real gusher—one born to gush—you can just throw all bounds of probability aside and say the first thing that comes into your head, sure that it will meet with an appreciative burst of enthusiasm, for your true gusher is nothing if she is not enthusiastic. ”

“ I'm afraid that isn't your specialty, heart of mine. Now if you could teach other women the art of making a man believe that he has cornered the entire visible supply of ecstatic thrills in marrying the woman of his choice—by Jove, now! there's an idea!"
Now Jimaboy had no idea in particular; he never had an idea that he did not immediately coin it into words and try to sell it. But Isobel's eyes were suspiciously bright, and the situation had to be saved.
"I was just thinking: the thing to do successfully is the—er—the thing you do best, isn't it?" ”

“ Maybury's loss, it would be living with Julia! What castles they used to build about living together and working with the heathen around home. And Julia always went to the old East Church, too; and they had believed just the same things, the same election, and predestination and damnation and all; at one time they had thought of going out missionaries together to the Polynesian Island, but that had been before Julia took Captain Cairnes for better or worse, principally worse, and before she herself undertook all she could in converting Dr. Maybury,—a perfect Penelope's web of a work ”

“ The four had formed a little group to themselves in the [Pg 1719] center of the parlor, Lucy clinging to Jimmy's arm, Mrs. Putnam eying them both with a happy expression, and Alice fluttering from one to the other, assuring them that they were the handsomest couple she ever had seen, that they ought to be proud of each other, and that Mrs. Putnam ought to be proud of them, and that she was sure nobody in all the world ever, ever could be as sublimely, beatifically happy as they would be, and that they must be sure to let her come to visit them. ”

“ Subliminal self said he would outgrow that. "But there are other men who are just as nice, just as handsome, and just as clever, who are not so overwhelmingly shy," argued Lucy. Whereat subliminal self drew itself up proudly and demanded: "Name one!" And Lucy was like the person who can remember faces, but has no memory at all for names.
II
Cousin Mary came to town as she had promised, and she made Cousin Jimmy drop his work and follow her through the shops half the morning. Cousin Mary was all that Cousin Jimmy had ever said of her. She was pretty and she was genial. ”

“ I considered that organ scheme abandoned long ago."
"Is it worth while, do you think, to do anything with the Methodist Church mortgage?"
"How much is it?"
"Three thousand dollars, I think."
"Yes, three thousand from forty thousand leaves us only thirty-seven thousand. Then, if we do it for the Methodists we shall have to do it for the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and swarms of churches all around the country. We can't make flesh of one and fowl of another. It will be safer to treat them all alike; and more just, too. I think we ought to try to be just with them, don't you, Mary Jane?" ”