Thomas A. Janvier

“ Livingstone's thoughts.
The first of these was thinking: "It isn't Van Rensselaer Livingstone, any more than I am; though he certainly looks like him. And I'm sure that he knows that he don't know me. And I think that we've managed to get into a blank idiotic mess!"
And the second of these was thinking: "If he's been in Europe for the past ten years, there's not one chance in fifty that I ever have laid eyes on him. But I know I have!"
And the third of these was thinking: "There isn't man in the room who looks enough like Dicky Smith to be his tenth cousin. ”

“ With the assured air of one who possibly may be repulsed, but who certainly cannot be defeated, he arose from his seat, crossed to Miss Grace Winthrop's section, and, with a pleasant remark to the effect that in travelling it always was nice to be sociable, edged himself into the seat beside her. ”

“ Mr. Hutchinson Port, lulled by the easy, jog-trot motion of the car, and soothed by the air from Paradise that, for his virtues, he was being permitted to breathe, lapsed into calm and grateful slumber: and dreamed (nor could a worthy Philadelphian desire a better dream) of a certain meeting of the Saturday Night Club, in December, 1875, whereat the terrapin was remarkable, even for Philadelphia. ”

“ But when a man is wanted, and, especially, as in the case in point, a clever man, the matter very readily may become desperate. Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith certainly was dismayed, yet was she not utterly cast down. She had faith in her own quick wits, which had rescued her in times past from other social calamities, though never from one darker than this, of having, at a single fatal blow, her best man cut off from one of her most important dinner-parties, and the dinner-party itself reduced to thirteen ”

“ Smith was a methodical man, and in the calmness partly bred of his naturally orderly habits, and partly bred of his despair, he seated himself at his desk, in company with a comforting cigar, to think of any possible men whom he might beat up at their homes as he went westward. ”

“ Livingstone. Miss Winthrop is half Boston and half European, Mr. Livingstone; and as you, after these ten years abroad, must be wholly European, you can cheer each other as fellow foreigners in the midst of Philadelphia barbarism"—with which pleasant speech the hostess turned quickly to receive the last arrival (a man, of course; only a man would dare to be even near to late at one of Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith's dinners) , and then, standing beside the doorway, with Mr. Hutchinson Port, marshalled her company in to dinner. ”

“ Yet this was the actual state of the case; and the little man's soul was uplifted by the thought that here was a fresh proof, and a very pleasant one, of how irresistible were his personal appearance and his personal charm of manner when arrayed in battery against any one of the gentler sex. ”

“ When a woman's as handsome as you are, she can't be bad-natured. Come from California, I suppose? Nice country over there, ain't it?"
What with surprise and rage and fright, Grace was very nearly frantic For the moment she was powerless—her uncle in the smoking-room, her aunt locked up with her Emersonian meditations, the porter in the lobby; the only available person upon whom she could call for aid a horrible drunken murderer and robber, steeped in all the darkest crimes of the frontier! ”

“ But had these Smith dinners been commendable only because the food was good, they would not have been at all remarkable. In Philadelphia, so far as the eating is concerned, a bad dinner seems to be an impossibility. ”