“ JONES BY LLOYD OSBOURNE I
I could have taken "No" like a man, and would have gone away decently and never bothered her again. I told her so straight out in the first angry flush of my rejection—but this string business, with everything left hanging in the air, so to speak, made a fellow feel like thirty cents.
"It simply means that I'm engaged and you are not," I said.
"It's nothing of the kind," she returned tearfully. "You're as free as free, Ezra. You can go away this moment, and never write or anything!" ”

“ You're colossal, that's what you are!"
"I'm only in love," I said.
"Well, that's the love that moves mountains," he said. "If anybody had told me that I should...." He stopped irresolutely on the word.
"Oh, to think I have to stand for all that rot!" he bleated.
I was too wise to say a word. I simply motioned James to switch the car around and back up. I shooed Jones into the tonneau and turned the knob on him. He snuggled back in the cushions, and smiled—yes smiled—with a beautiful, blue-eyed, far-away, indulgent expression that warmed me like spring sunshine. ”

“ I was disgusted with the chump.
"She's the star above me," he said; "and I am crushed by my own presumption. Is there any such fool as the man that breaks his heart twice for the impossible?"
"But it isn't impossible," I cried. "Hasn't she—as far as a woman can—hasn't she called you back to her? What more do you expect her to do? A woman's delicacy forbids her screaming for a man! I think Eleanor has already gone a tremendous way in just hinting—"
"You may be right," he said pathetically; "but then you may also be wrong. The risk is too terrible for me to run. ”

“ She was tall and bony; worshipped genius and all that; and played the violin.
"No," repeated Freddy, "I shall never, never marry before Eleanor. It would mortify her—I know it would—and make her feel that she herself had failed. She's awfully frank about those things, Ezra—surprisingly frank. I don't see why being an old maid is always supposed to be so funny, do you? It's touching and tragic in a woman who'd like to marry and who isn't asked!"
"But Eleanor must have had heaps of offers," I said, "surely—"
"Just one." ”

“ Why shouldn't Eleanor marry the only one—and make us all happy!
"That was three years ago," said Freddy.
"I have loved you for four," I retorted. I was cross with disappointment. To be dashed to the ground, you know, just as I was beginning—"Tell me some more about him," I went on. I'm a plain business man and hang on to an idea like a bulldog; once I get my teeth in they stay in, for all you may drag at me and wallop me with an umbrella—metaphorically speaking, of course. ”

“ I walked up and down, consigning Jones to—well, where I thought he belonged. I thought of the time I had wasted over the fellow—the good money—the hopes—I was savage with disappointment, and when I heard Freddy softly calling me from the veranda I zigzagged away through the trees toward the lodge gate. There are moments when a man is better left alone. Besides, I was in one of those self-tormenting humors when it is a positive pleasure to pile on the agony. When you're eighty-eight per cent. miserable it's hell not to reach par. ”

“ Doctor Jones dropped his head on his hands and murmured something that sounded like "Eleanor, Eleanor!" Then he looked up with one of the most radiant smiles I ever saw on a man's face. "I hope I'm not presuming on a very short acquaintance," he said, "but the fact is—why should I not tell you?—Miss Van Coort was the woman in my life!" ”

“ The police of Paris rarely get together in front of the court-house to pitch horseshoes or dwell on the outlook for the goober crop.
And yet the same blue, ozonic sky, if I may be allowed to coin a word, the same soft, restful, dolce frumenti air of gentle, genial health, and of cark destroying, magnetic balm to the congested soul, the inflamed nerve and the festering brain, are present in Asheville that one finds in the quiet drives of San Cloo with the successful squirt of the mighty fountains of Vairsi and the dark and whispering forests of Fon-taine-bloo. ”

“ The Martyrs slapped one another's backs and grew blue in the face with laughter. At a signal, a light box was placed where the chest would crush it (which it did with a sound like a small railway collision) ; the chest was stopped and the lid raised.
"Let the body receive Christian burial," said the Sovereign Pontiff. "Our vengeance ceases with death."
This truly Christian sentiment was received with universal approval. Death seemed to all a good place at which to stop.
"Brethren," said the Deacon Militant, as he struggled with the resurgent Stevens, "there seems some life here! ”

“ Stevens reached the train just as the conductor shouted, "All aboard!"
"Book-agent!" he yelled, as the book-agent stepped on the train. "Book-agent, hold on! Mr. Watson wants to see you."
"Watson? Watson wants to see me?" repeated the seemingly puzzled book-agent. "Oh, I know what he wants: he wants to buy one of my books; but I can't miss the train to sell it to him."
"If that is all he wants, I can pay for it and take it back to him. How much is it?"
"Two dollars, for the 'Early Christian Martyrs,'" said the book-agent, as he reached for the money and passed the book out of the car-window. ”

“ The uninstructed Amidon regarded them as inconceivable horse-play. While thus he mused, Stevens, who was still hoodwinked and being greatly belectured on the virtue of Faith and the duty of Obedience, reëntered on his ordeal.
He was now informed by the officer at the other end of the room that every man must ascend into the Mountains of Temptation and be tested, before he could be pronounced fit for companionship with Martyrs. Therefore, a weary climb heavenward was before him, and a great trial of his fidelity. On his patience, daring and fortitude depended all his future in the Order. ”

“ Said to me, holding my hand, and, and—that the only thing she didn't like about me was my name." [Pg 1039]
I contrived to get out, "Good heavens!" with the proper astonishment.
"I told her that Van Coort didn't strike me as being anything very extra."
"Wouldn't it have been wiser to—?"
"Oh, for myself, I'd do anything in the world for her. But a fellow has to show a little decent pride. A fellow owes something to his family, doesn't he? As a man I love the ground she walks on; as a Jones—well, if she feels like that about it—I told her she had better wait for a De Montmorency." ”

“ Matthewman remarked significantly that it must be nice to be the wife of a medical man—one would always have the safe feeling of a doctor at hand in case anything happened at night! Eleanor said it was a beautiful profession that had for its object the alleviation of human pain. Freddy jealously tried to get in a good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me. It was all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern medicine. ”

“ Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles,
And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes;
We gather our herds at the head,
Where the axes have toppled them loose,
And down from the hills where the rivers are fed
We harry the hemlock and spruce.
We hurroop them with the peavies from their sullen beds of snow;
With the pickpole for a goadstick, down the brimming streams we go;
They are hitching, they are halting, and they lurk and hide and dodge,
They sneak for skulking-eddies, they bunt the bank and lodge ”

“ Idleness is a grinding occupation, especially on Eighth Avenue in the morning.
Mrs. Jones was a thin, straight-backed, brisk old lady, with a keen tongue, and a Yankee faculty for coming to the point. I besought her indulgence, and laid the whole Eleanor matter before her—at least, as much of it as seemed wise. I appeared in the rôle of her son's warmest admirer and best friend.
"Surely you won't let Harry ruin his life from a mistaken sense of his duty to you?"
"Duty, fiddlesticks!" said she. "He's going to marry Bertha McNutt!" ”

“ I said as we stopped at the bishop's door and I handed him up a dollar bill. "That's just the kind of a cold that makes graveyards hum!"
"I can't shake it off, sir," he said despondently. "Try what I can, and it's never no use!"
"There's one doctor in the world who can cure anything," I said; "Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I was worse than you two weeks ago, and now look at me! Take this five dollars, and for heaven's sake, man, put yourself in his hands quick." ”

“ I don't want to praise myself, but if I have one good quality it's staying power. I pleaded and argued, and expostulated and explained, with the determination of a man whose back is to the wall. I wasn't going to lose Freddy so long as there was breath in my body. However, it wasn't the least good in the world. Jones was as impervious as sole-leather, and as unshaken as a marble pillar. ”

“ Immediately both children were immersed in the beauties of a collection of rejected models which had been obtained from the patent office, and which, surely, were the most diverting toys imaginable.
"Poor things, to them they are most valuable!" sighed Mrs. Winslow. She was making conversation about the Miller china; but Johnny-Ivan and Peggy not unreasonably conceived that she spoke of the beautiful churns and hayraking wagons and cars and wheeled chairs and the like marvels which Miss Hopkins was amiably explaining for them. ”

“ Last night to the Play where comes Lasselle and makes very merry and telleth jokes the which of great amusement to my wife while I find no mirth therein. Later to supper at the coffee house and my wife exceedingly witty and me all of a wonder at the change in her in public and on reflection do find it passing strange that one ugly like Mistress Badminton will effort her to be gracious at home while one so handsome as my wife sleeps ever. ”

“ The big brown bruin stricken falls
And in his juices lies;
His blood is spent, yet deep content
Beams from his limpid eyes.
"Congratulations, dear old pal!"
He murmurs as he dies.
From Cripple Creek and Soda Springs,
Gun Gulch and Gunnison,
A-foot, a-sock, the people flock
To see that deed of gun;
And parents bring huge families
To show what they have done. ”

“ I noticed last night before going to bed that my medicine chest was about run out. There's nothing but one quinine pill and a soda-mint drop in it, and if there's anything in the music cure I don't think I'll have it filled again. I prefer Wagner to squills, and compared to the delights of Mozart, Hayden and Offenbach those of paregoric are nit."
"Still rambling, eh?" vouchsafed the Doctor. "You ought to submit your tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think, from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of perpetual motion." ”

“ Johnny-Ivan shook a tragic head; even his lips had gone bluish-white. "She said thousands wouldn't repair the damage," moaned he.
"You can't make me believe those mean little wooden tricks are worth any thousand dollars!" volleyed Peggy; nevertheless, her heart beat faster,—grown people are so queer. "Are you sure she meant them? Maybe it was those things in the next glass case; they're her own things! They're some kind of Chinese china and cost a heap." Peggy's sturdy womanly wits were rising from the shock. ”

“ Stuffenhammer was an immense catch.
"Twenty thousand dollars a year, and her own carriage," continued Mrs. McNutt gloatingly. "You could have knocked me down with a feather. Bertha is such a considerate child; she insisted on marrying secretly so that she could tone it down by degrees to poor Harry; though there was no engagement or anything like that, she could not help feeling, of course, that she owed it to the dear boy to gradually—"
Mrs. Jones never turned a hair or moved a muscle.
"You needn't pity Harry," she said. ”

“ Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a thousand—unimpeachable social position—a little fortune of her own—accomplished, handsome, charming, sought after—why, if you managed to win such a girl as that your mother would walk on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha—"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a little tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for my girl. Good heavens, love is love, and all the mothers—" [Pg 1032]
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to our hostess. If you went away to-night it would be an insult. ”

“ But I said Jones would get on to it if I deluged him with the misery of the slums.
"That's just where the bishop comes in," said Nevill. "There isn't a man more in touch with the saddest kind of poverty in New York—the decent, clean, shrinking poverty that hides away from all the dead-head coffee and doughnuts. If I was in your fix I'd fall over myself to reach Jordan!"
"Yes, you try Jordan," said Charley, who, I'm sure, had never heard of him before. ”

“ But no finer specimen of unconscious humor has ever fallen under the sub-editorial eye than "The Beautiful Circus Girl." In these enterprising days rising young authors sometimes boast in print of their ignorance of grammar and spelling, but the author of the aforementioned bit of fiction surpasses them all in that respect. ”

“ No splitting headache or shaky hand the next day, but just the calm, quiet, contented feeling that goes with the sense of having got completely rested up."
"You run a dreadful risk, however," said the Doctor, with a sarcastic smile. "The Wagner habit is a terrible thing to acquire, Mr. Idiot."
"That may be," said the Idiot. "Worse than the sulfonal habit by a great deal I am told, but I am in no danger of becoming a victim to it while it costs from five to seven dollars a dose. ”

“ My wife not well and strangely indisposed towards me yawning unduly and complaining that life is dull, yet gay enough for others and of a great joy over riding horseback with Lasselle. Last night did chide her in bed for upwards of an hour and misliked me greatly when I had done to find that she slept for some while before. Will have the doctor to her for there be surely something amiss in a woman who is not happy with me.
To my office and H. Nevil all excitement over his margins. ”