Various

“ That old woman had got into such a habit of talking about her approaching death that Sheila had ceased to believe her, and had grown to fancy that these morbid speculations were indulged in chiefly for the sake of shocking bystanders. But a dead man or a dead woman is suddenly invested with a great solemnity; and Sheila with a pang of remorse thought of the fashion in which she had suspected this old woman of a godless hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender—that she had feared to go near her, and blamed her unfairly for many things that had happened. ”

“ Cushing a chief: he does not believe in the people.
Thus it is easily seen that your life at the Federal Capital, if you possess either an eye for beauty or an interest in affairs, may be full of enjoyment and variety. Your companions are people of mark; you learn, by returning, when summer does, to the small scandals and personalities of common towns, how large is the outlook in Washington; the theatre of the world opens before you there; you feel that you assist at the making of history, if you are not yourself a part of events. ”

“ Lorraine quietly, "that there is any use in your asking me what you should do, for I know what you will do, whether it accords with any one's opinion or no. And yet you would find a great advantage in having money."
"Oh, I know that," he said readily. "I should like to be rich beyond anything that ever happened in a drama; and I should take my chance of all the evil influences that money is supposed to exert. Do you know, I think you rich people are very unfairly treated."
"But we are not rich," said Mrs. Kavanagh, passing at the time. "Cecilia and I find ourselves very poor sometimes." ”

“ I cannot call Baden-Baden a city: it is a stage. It is a perpetually set-scene for light opera. Everything seems dressed up and artificial, and meant to be viewed, as it were, in the glare of the foot-lights. But instead of the shepherds in white satin who ought to be the performers in this ingenious theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is forced into the position of actor. ”

“ Yonder is quite a large town clustering round the extreme peak of a mountain at least three thousand feet high, and utterly bald of vegetation; there is Eza perched upon a rock rising perpendicularly from the sea, so that a stone thrown from the church-tower would fall straight into the waves below through fifteen hundred feet of space; far away in the distance, and close upon the shore, looking as white as a band of pearls, are the villas of Mentone, and just in front of them the castle-crowned heights of Monaco ”

“ In one of the fishing-smacks that lie almost underneath the shadow of the tall crag on which the castle ruins stand, an artist has put a rough-and-ready easel, and is apparently busy at work painting a group of boats just beyond. Some indication of the rich colors of the craft—their ruddy sails, brown nets and bladders, and their varnished but not painted hulls—already appears on the canvas; and by and by some vision may arise of the far hills in their soft autumnal tints and of the bold blue and white sky moving overhead. ”

“ Ingram said carelessly, and nursing his knee with both his hands as usual, "traveling is not wicked: it is only unreasonable. A traveler, you know, is a person who has a house in one town, and who goes to live in a house in another town, in order to have the pleasure of paying for both."
"Mr. Ingram," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "will you talk seriously for one minute, and tell me whether we are to expect to see you in the Tyrol?"
But Ingram was not in a mood for talking seriously, and he waited to hear Mrs. Lorraine strike in with some calmly audacious invitation. ”

“ There are few cities where life is so well put upon the stage as in Washington, so far as opportunity for satisfaction and enjoyment is considered. A certain grandeur characterizes all the approaches to the city. From the west you descend upon it by a way that leads out of cloudy mountain-chains and over chasms spanned by an awful trestle-work; from the south, passing our national Mecca, the Tomb of Washington, your highway is the picturesque Potomac, which here, nearly three hundred miles from the sea, broadly embays itself as if to mirror the magnificence of the place ”

“ In such a Society of course all asperities are softened: this man's daughter dances with the son of his arch-enemy; deference is accorded to the opinion of a woman on public matters as if she already possessed her right of suffrage; there is an exhilaration in meeting and avoiding and overlooking, in the light and skillful skating over dangerous surfaces, while a rare freedom unites with a gentle even if politic courtesy, which it is delightful to meet to-night and which allures you to seek it to-morrow. Society without a conscience it is, possibly, but for all that sufficiently fascinating. ”

“ There are fine ladies who have lived forty years in Washington without attending that pandemonium, the levee, where the crowd seizes one with a hundred hands till flounce and furbelow are crushed in its grasp, and where, while the court reigns in the Blue Room, the mob are disporting themselves in the magnificence of the East Room, the parlor of the people, where they have the reddest of red curtains, the broadest of gold cornices, the portraits of their public servants in the panels between square rods of looking-glass ”

“ The view obtained hence is amongst the most beautiful in the world. Facing you is the deep blue Thyranean Sea, sparkling with sails, and often on a clear day with the hazy outline of the island of Corsica distinctly visible on its horizon. To the right lies Nice, with all her domes, towers, churches, hotels, quays and the interminable line of her palatial villas traced out as in a map. Then range after range of mountains of every shape and nature, grass grown, rocky, forest-covered, barren, rise one above the other until the mists of distance alone efface them from sight. ”

“ Now the mist is stripped away from some massive marble pile; now a prospect opens of river and wood and the pillared heights of Arlington; now a [pg 652] lofty heaven reveals a waning moon, it may be—for every square has its horizon—the morning-star flames out, a red and yellow sunrise burns behind the silver cloud of the Capitol dome, and the whole city, in its splendor and its squalor, bared to view, gives you a suffocating sense of the pettiness of all other places before the opulence of sky, the width and height, the light and space and air, that Washington affords. ”

“ But what pen can describe the splendor of this scene? what brush reproduce its ever-changing hues, its delicate mists, its broad shadows, the deep blue of the sea, the rosy tint which Aurora casts over all, or the vivid purples and crimsons which glow upon the mountain-crags and strew the indigo of the Mediterranean with jasper, ruby, Sapphire and gold when the sun falls to rest behind the beautiful Cape of Antibes? Nature defies Art in such a spot as this, and seems to triumph in bewildering our delighted senses with the infinite variety of her products. ”

“ And so it was that one rough and blustering afternoon the Clansman steamed into Stornoway harbor, and Sheila, casting timid and furtive glances toward the quay, saw Duncan standing there, with the wagonette some little distance back under charge of a boy. Duncan was a proud man that day. He was the first to shove the gangway on to the vessel, and he was the first to get on board; and in another minute Sheila found the tall, keen-eyed, brown-faced keeper before her, and he was talking in a rapid and eager fashion, throwing in an occasional scrap of Gaelic in the mere hurry of his words. ”

“ The story of a bright and educated traveler is always a capital one, and Mr. Pike has done wonders for Mauritius, which would seem in itself to be one of the most deplorably dull and fatiguing prominences on the face of the sea. An enthusiastic botanist and naturalist, as well as an interested ethnologist, this lively observer relieves the monotony of a seemingly easy consulate and repulsive population by watching all the secrets of animated nature around him. It is a very bloodthirsty island that his fates have guided him to: everything bites or stings or poisons. ”

“ Your carriage can roll for leagues over streets whose roadway is smooth as a floor, past squares rich in the foliage and flower of their season, enchanting pictures of river and height unveiled at every turn, and the squalor once so prominent is seen striking its tents, while only the splendor remains. There is hardly a street but down its vista some allurement is displayed: this one reaches far away, through the green of willows and the blue of distance, across the Long Bridge and into the hills of Virginia ”

“ The lower corridors, too, are pictured with representations of our natural history in bird and flower and fruit—far fitter decoration than the swarming cherubs and cupids and numberless unwarrantable little Loves that tumble about on the other walls, intrude themselves on battle-scenes, and hover round the appalling frescoes of Liberty, Law, Legislation and Religion in the President's room, after a fashion that would be too free and easy for the villa of Lucullus, but which is not altogether discordant with the splendid leprosy of gilding with which the whole interior is infected ”

“ It is hardly to be hoped. Neither Lent, nor religion, nor judgment, nor anything but poverty and absolute impotence, will put a period to the wild pursuit of pleasure that a fashionable season begins. Ill for the next generation, the mothers of which are wrecks before its birth! Well for Florimonde and Maudita, with all the dew and freshness of their youth destroyed, if at length, thoroughly ennuyées, they do not put a piquancy and flavor of sin into their pleasure, as the old West Indian toper dashes his insipid brandy with cayenne! ”

“ Lavender nor Sheila should have it. If Sheila gets it, of course she will give it to her husband. Now, if it is not to be given to her, do you think I should regard the money with any particular horror and refuse to touch it? That would be very romantic, perhaps, but I should be sorry, you know, to give my friends the most disquieting doubts about my sanity. Romance goes out of a man's head when the hair gets gray."
"Until a man has gray hair," Mrs. Lorraine said, still with some unnecessary fervor, "he does not know that there are things much more valuable than money. ”

“ And Berkley, perfectly acquainted with the locality, directed our steps into a narrow path hardly traced through the woods. Here at least were flowers and grass and sylvan shadows. No sooner did I smell the balm of the pine trees than my heart resigned itself, with exquisite indecision, to the thoughts of Francine Joliet and the memories of Mary Ashburton. I glanced at Berkley: he seemed, in Scotch clothes, a little less impenetrable than he had appeared in white cravat and dress-gloves. I cannot restrain my confidences when a man is near me: I buttonholed Sylvester, and I made the plunge. ”

“ Long suites of apartments with frescoed walls, ceilings of gold and pearl, floors inlaid with exquisite mosaics of silver and ebony, and with hangings of costly lace, velvet and satin, huge waxen candles, and lamps fed with perfumed oil that are never suffered to expire, mirrors, pictures, and statuettes innumerable, with cups, basins, and even spittoons, of pure gold,—all these are but a tithe of the lavish adornments of this Oriental paradise, where birds sing, flowers bloom, and the sounds of low sweet music ever greet the ear of the favored visitor. ”

“ And by and by, when the building shall be quite complete, and shrubbery shall have grown in the new grounds, when the almond and the tulip tree and that burning bush the scarlet Japan quince, shall have come to blossom there, and the giant magnolia shall lift its snowy urns of incense about the spot, imagination will be able to conjure up no image of majesty and beauty eclipsing the reality. ”

“ As the good formalist fasts on Friday, with dishes of oysters escalloped deliciously on the shell, with toasted crabs, and bass baked in port wine. Will Florimonde forego her low necks or Maudita her blonde powder? Will there be any less excitement or rivalry in their private theatricals and concerts for charity? Will the flirtations be any less extraordinary at the high teas? The mind will be perhaps a little flighty; the health will not be so firm; there will be a good deal of morbid sorrow over imaginary misdeeds, and none at all over real ones ”

“ Society in other cities is totally unlike Society in Washington. There it is an interchange of kindliness between households of friends: it is the festivity of happy anniversaries, the union of families in new ties, the cherishing of long acquaintance. But in Washington—except so far as the small number of residents is concerned—its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous: each Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new rabble at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is carried on by dining ”

“ Ingram, not looking at her, but looking at Sheila, said, "Yes;" and Sheila, despite all her efforts, could not help glancing up with a brief smile and blush of pleasure that were quite visible to everybody.
Mrs. Lorraine struck in with a sort of nervous haste: "Oh, that will be very pleasant for mamma, for she gets rather tired of me at times when we are traveling. Two women who always read the same sort of books, and have the same opinions about the people they meet, and have precisely the same tastes in everything, are not very amusing companions for each other. ”

“ Many of the trees are very large, and their trunks are black and much twisted, their branches long and weird-looking, but the exceeding delicacy of their foliage, which is dark green on the outside and silver gray on the inner, lends them a very fascinating appearance, especially on a moonlight night, when the arching boughs of an olive grove look exactly as if covered with shawls of rich black lace. ”