William Dean Howells

“ That afternoon Reuben Camp came lounging up toward us, where I sat with her on the corner of the piazza, and said that if she would like to let him try his luck with some tickets for the Talk he would see what he could do.
"You can have all you want, Reuben," she said, "and I hope you'll have better luck than I have. I'm perfectly disgusted with people." ”

“ It was fine to see how the natives and the trainmen and the hotel servants, with an instinctive perception of the proprieties, yielded these places to their superiors, and, after the summer folks were all seated, scattered themselves on the grass and the pine-needles about the border of the grove. I should have liked to instance the fact to the Altrurian, as a proof that this sort of subordination was a part of human nature, and that a principle which pervaded our civilization, after the democratic training of our whole national life, must be divinely implanted. ”

“ Mrs. Makely seemed to have a conscience as light as air.
"If Reuben Camp or the head waiter don't bring back some of those tickets I don't know what I shall do. I shall have to put chairs into the isles, and charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd in there. I never knew anything so perfectly providential." ”

“ A good many of the farmers came over to the hotel to buy tickets, which they said they expected to get after they came, and Mrs. Makely was obliged to pacify them with all sorts of lying promises. From moment to moment she was in consultation with the landlord, who decided to throw open the dining-room, which connected with the parlor, so as to allow the help and the neighbors to hear, without incommoding the hotel guests. ”

“ Homos is a perfect dear, and all the women in the house are in love with him, from the cook's helpers, up and down. No, the only danger is that there won't be room in the hotel parlors for all the people that will want to hear him, and we shall have to make the admission something that will be prohibitive in most cases. ”

“ Makely had sold above two hundred and fifty tickets and chances. All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the belief that a great many people at the other hotels and cottages had bought seats merely to aid the cause, and would not really come; she estimated that at least fifty would stay away: but if Reuben Camp had sold his tickets among the natives, we might expect every one of them to come and get his money's worth; she did not dare to ask the head waiter how he had got rid of his twenty-five tickets. ”

“ Why, you know, the Union chapel, over in the village, is in a languishing condition, and the ladies have been talking all summer about doing something for it, getting up something—a concert, or theatricals, or a dance, or something—and applying the proceeds to repainting and papering the visible church; it needs it dreadfully. But, of course, those things are not exactly religious, don't you know; and a fair is so much trouble ”

“ I said, faint at heart. "Suppose Camp crowds the place full of his train men, how will the ladies that you've sold tickets to at five dollars apiece like it?"
"Pooh! What do I care how they like it! Horrid things! And for repairs on the house of Gawd, it's the same as being in church, where everybody is equal."
The time passed. Mrs. Makely sold chances to all the ladies in the house; on Friday night Reuben Camp brought her a hundred dollars; the head waiter had already paid in twenty-five. ”

“ Many of our ladies had pretty hats and brilliant parasols, but I must say that the soberer tone of some of the old farm-wives' brown calicoes and outdated bonnets contributed to enrich the coloring, and there was a certain gayety in the sunny glisten of the men's straw-hats, everywhere, that was very good. ”

“ But Reuben has got all my tickets, and suppose he keeps them so long that I won't have time to sell any, and then throws them back on my hands? I know! she added joyously. "I can go around now, and tell people that my tickets are all gone; and I'll go instantly and have the clerk hold all he has left at a premium."
She came back looking rather blank.
"He hasn't got a single one left. He says an old native came in this morning and took every last one of them—he doesn't remember just how many. I believe they're going to speculate on them; and if Reuben Camp serves me a trick like that—Why!" ”

“ No one said anything against the plan to Mrs. Makely, and this energetic woman made us take two tickets apiece, as soon as she got them printed, over in the village. She got little hand-bills printed, and had them scattered about through the neighborhood, at all the hotels, boarding-houses and summer cottages, to give notice of the time and place of the talk on Altruria. She fixed this for the following Saturday afternoon, in our hotel parlor; she had it in the afternoon so as not to interfere with the hop in the evening ”

“ She said that this took a great burden off her mind, and that now she should feel perfectly easy, for now no one could complain about being mixed up with the servants and the natives, and yet every one could hear perfectly. ”