Various

“ Sometimes it seems as if the whole body of recent American literature were not worth the damage sustained by character while consuming the fruits of success. There are signs of a bad schooling, of too steady a fare of sweets. For what doth it profit a man to run to a hundred thousand if he turn out a prig? The thing too often happens. His constitution may have been none too robust at the start, but it is awful to think what might become of any of us. Undermined by reciprocal endearments, we, too, might rage at the first word of criticism and swoon at the sound of laughter. ”

“ Well, then, it is like a beaker full of the warm South when you are leaving a good beer country and are trying to reconcile yourself to ditch-water for the next few weeks. At any rate, similes or not, there were we two together again at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the purple mountains of the Aroostook. ”

“ We hold it to be the duty of the National Government to put all the governmental resources of our people, national and state, behind the movement for the wise and sane uplifting of the men and women whose lives are hardest.
We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for all our people, if some of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted. ”

“ In point of age, these mountains beside the Catskills are like infants beside their great-grandfathers. Yet it is a singular contradiction that in their outlines old mountains look young, and young mountains look old. The only youthful feature about young mountains is that they carry their heads very high, and the only old feature about old mountains is that they have a look of repose and calmness and peace. All the gauntness, leanness, angularity, and crumbling decrepitude are with the young mountains; all the smoothness, plumpness, graceful flowing lines of youth are with the old mountains. ”

“ New York’s streets are of course often choked with them. A duke, an elephant, a base-ball pitcher on Fifth Avenue, may at any time be the center of a disproportionate and servile attention from both the American people and the press. Yet the cult of the egregious and the greatly advertised has never the deep devotion of sound snobbery. It is not for an upstart and volatile people to dispute the calm supremacy of British snobbery. Your true snob is not inquisitive at all. He has no sense of any social values not his own. ”

“ We respect the judges, we think that they are more apt on the whole to be good public servants than any other men in office; but we as emphatically refuse to subscribe to the doctrine of the divine right of judges as to the doctrine of the divine right of kings. We are not specially concerned with the question as to which of two public servants, the court or the legislature, shall have the upper hand of the other; but we are vitally concerned in seeing that the people have the upper hand over both. Any argument against our position on this point is merely an argument against democracy. ”

“ Alan was standing with his side to the rail, his eyes leaving her face only to keep track of the promenaders, so that no officious friend could take her by surprise. He went on talking.
“Our judgment is calling to us to quit, but it is calling from days ago,” he said. “We wouldn’t listen then, and it’s only the echo we hear now. We can try to quit if you like; but when I am alone, I shall call for you, and when you are alone, you will call for me. We shall always be alone except when we are near each other. We can’t break the tension, Alix. It will break us in the end.” ”

“ There is no spot to make your nest except right out on the rim of the world; no spot for a walk or a picnic except in the featureless open of a thousand miles of black prairie—the roads black, straight lines of mud or dust through the landscape; the streams slow, indolent channels of muddy water; the woods, where there are woods, a dull assemblage of straight-trunked trees; the sky a brazen dome that shuts down upon you; there are no hills or mountains to lift it up. The prairie draws no strong distinct lines against the sky ”

“ Five o’clock, also, of a late June afternoon is a peculiarly wonderful time to be arriving home, especially if that home has a garden about it, so that you are thereby not rushed precipitously upon the house itself, as upon a cup without a saucer, but can toy visually with the whole effect before you quench your thirst with the actual draft.
Very, very deliberately, with his clumsy rod-case in one hand, and his heavy grip in the other, the Senior Surgeon started up the long, broad gravel path to the house. For a man walking as slow as he was, his heart was beating most extraordinarily fast. ”

“ The chipmunk is provident; he is a wise housekeeper, but one can hardly envy him those three or four months of inaction in the pitchy darkness of his subterranean den. His mate is not with him, and evidently the oblivion of the hibernating sleep, like that of the woodchuck and of certain mice, is not his. The life of the red and gray squirrels, who are more or less active all winter, seems preferable. They lay up no stores and are no doubt often cold and hungry, but the light of day and the freedom of the snow and of the tree-tops are theirs. ”

“ This is one reason why so many more Auto-comrades are to be found in crow’s-nests, Gipsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars and the sea from a swaying masthead, taking light-heartedly to the open road, or even operating a rather unwholesome sewing-machine all day in silence, is better for consecutiveness of mind than a never-ending round of offices, clubs, servants, committee meetings, teas, dinners, and receptions, to each of which one is a little late. ”

“ There were charming dances in costume from Russia, from Scotland, from Hungary, and from Spain. I myself waltzed with a Spanish dancer, and had the wonder of seeing an American girl rise from her table and dance with more skill and grace than the employed talent. A wine-enthused Englishman, a handsome youth of twenty-six or more, took the floor and remained there gaily prancing about from table to table, dancing alone or with whomsoever would welcome him. ”

“ Old mountains, such as the Appalachian range, wear an armor of soil and verdure over their rounded forms [Pg 883] on which the arrows of time have little effect. The turbulent and noisy and stiff-necked period of youth is far behind them.
Hundreds of dairy-farms nestle in the laps of the Catskills; and their huge, grassy aprons, only a little wrinkled here and there, hold as many grazing herds. Woodchuck Lodge is well upon the knee of one of the ranges, and the fields we look upon are like green drapery lying in graceful curves and broad, smooth masses over huge extended limbs. ”

“ Paris is as young in its mood as any city in the world. It is as wildly enthusiastic as a child. This morning I noticed here the strange occurrence of battered-looking old fellows singing to themselves, which I never noticed anywhere else in this world. Age sits lightly on the Parisian, I am sure, and youth is a wild fantasy, an exciting realm of romantic dreams. ”

“ All that day Teddy rode entirely without judgment, and his old daredevil dash was not in him. In fact, that was becoming his consistent experience. Every time he would set his teeth and let his engine out to the last notch to pass the man in front, a blind seemed to shut down in front of him, or a little red figure would appear stretched on the track ahead, and he would let the chance slip by.
Consequently, when he returned to give exhibitions at the Devil’s Soup-plate, he was no nearer the white southern garage of his dreams than he had been the previous season. ”

“ During the summer, many artists come in quest of rest or an industrious solitude. They are the ones who really enjoy and appreciate more than any one else the strange, sweet charm of this little provincial town, where every house has its garden, and every garden its flowers; where the peaceful days go by with a slow and regular rhythm, and the silence is broken only by the sound of the angelus or the ring of the blacksmith’s anvil. ”

“ In other words, he needs somebody else to do his living for him. He is a vicarious citizen of the world, holding his franchise only by courtesy of Tom, Dick, and Harry.
All the same, it is rather hard to pity him very profoundly while he continues to feel quite so contemptuously superior as he usually does. Why, the contempt of the average porcupine for pals of the Auto-comrade is akin to the contempt which the knights of chivalry felt for those paltry beings who were called clerks because they possessed the queer, unfashionable accomplishment of being able to read and write. ”

“ Experience has proved that we cannot afford to leave the great corporations to determine for themselves without governmental supervision how they shall treat their employees, their rivals, their customers, and the general public. But experience has no less shown that it is as fatal for the agents of government to be unjust to the corporation as to fail to secure justice from them. In dealing with railways, for example, it is just as important that rates should not be too low as that they should not be too high. The living wage and the living rate are interdependent. ”

“ I was looking at the interesting restaurant life, which never really seems to be interrupted anywhere in Paris. One can always find a dozen chairs, if not fifty or a hundred, somewhere out on the sidewalk, under the open sky or a glass roof, with little stone-topped tables beside them, the crowd surging to and fro in front. Here one can sit and have one’s coffee, liqueur, sandwich. Everybody seems to do it; it is as common as walking in the streets. ”

“ Stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the new beginning, the Senior Surgeon almost tripped and fell over the White Linen Nurse, sitting all huddled up and drowsy-eyed in a gray little heap on his outer threshold. The sensation of stepping upon a human body is not a pleasant one. It smote the Senior Surgeon nauseously through the nerves of his stomach. ”

“ It is certainly true that in my section the last two generations have lived off the capital of labor and brains which their ancestors put into the land; only here and there has a man added anything, only here and there is a farmer who does not wish he had some other business. If such men had that other business, they would reap the same poor results. In the long run, you cannot reap where you have not sown, and the only seed you can sow, in any business that yields tenfold, is yourself—your own wit, your own industry. ”

“ And yet this little town, with its quiet streets, its modest houses, its limpid river, and its Champs de Mars, where in fine weather the prominent citizens come to discuss the events of the day, has a tranquil and intimate charm of its own, and the country thereabouts is so rich in smiling, changing views,—moist fields along the water’s-edge, wild heaths, and villages bathed in sunlight,—that the whole makes a picture that wins one’s heart at first sight. ”

“ Now, if there is one thing above all others that the Auto-comrade cannot away with, it is the flaccid, indolent, stodgy brain of the porcupine. If people have let their minds slump down into porcupinishness, or have never taken the trouble to rescue them from that ignominious condition—well, the Auto-comrade is no snob; when all’s said, he is a rather democratic sort of chap, though he has to draw the line somewhere, you know, and he really must beg to be excused from rubbing shoulders with such intellectual rabble, for instance, as blocks upper Fifth Avenue on Sunday noons. ”

“ I am satisfied of one thing in this world, and that is that the commonest intelligence is very frequently confused or hypnotized or overpersuaded by certain situations, and that the weaker ones are ever full of the wildest forms of illusion. We talk about the sanity of life. I question whether it exists. Mostly it is a succession of confusing, disturbing impressions which are only rarely valid. This night I know I was moving in a sort of maze, and when I stepped into the taxi and was introduced to two ladies, I easily succumbed to what was obviously their great beauty. ”

“ But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want to play a particularly sharp trick you are willing to let people take you for a fool. I’ll own you’ve deceived me once or twice, even when I suspected you. I’ve heard that’s one of the most successful methods used in the American business world. That’s why I only say you look like an ass. You are an ass in some respects; but you are letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. ”

“ All the glory of the fall, the heyday of the ’coon and the squirrels, the woodchuck misses. No golden October, no Indian summer for him; he has had his day.
Though the woodchuck’s muscles are flabby, his heart is stout. The farm-dog can kill him, but he cannot make him show fear or dismay; he is game to the last. ”

“ But it is entirely obvious why those in control of the party and its main supporters in the political, financial, and newspaper worlds advocate the system. They do it from precisely the same motives that actuate them in opposing direct primaries, in opposing the initiative and the referendum, in opposing the right of the people to control their own officials, in opposing the right of the people as against the right of the judges to determine what the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, shall permit in the way of legislation for social and industrial justice. ”

“ With one honest prayer in stock, and at least two purely automatic social speeches of this sort, no man needs to flounder altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life. With no more mental interruption than the two-minute break in time, the Senior Surgeon then resumed his bitter-thoughted pacing.
At nine o’clock, however, patrolling his long, rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door the soft, whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. ”

“ Teddy Rocco was fully fifty yards behind; that is, he had a good long second in which to do his thinking. To his left was Sadie’s machine, on his right the crowd yelled an inarticulate chorus of fear and warning, which he heard above the roar of his motor. Dead ahead of him lay a small, outstretched figure in torn and dusty scarlet leather; and immediately above the white little face was a clear foot of almost perpendicular banking. ”

“ Not all these homes are alive. Here a charred beam tells the story of a fire, there a mound of trailing vines tenderly hides from view the shame of a ruin, and there again stands a tribute to the power of the new age—a house the shutters of which are closed and barred. ”