William Dean Howells

“ Lawton: “Yes, there’s nothing like serving dinner to bring the belated guest. It’s as infallible as going without an umbrella when it won’t rain.”
Campbell: “No, no! Wait a minute, Roberts. You might sit down without one guest, but you can’t sit down without five. It’s the old joke about the part of Hamlet. I’ll just step round to Aunt Mary’s house—why, I’ll be back in three minutes.”
Mrs. Roberts, with perfervid gratitude: “Oh, how good you are, Willis! You don’t know how much you’re doing! What presence of mind you have! ”

“ Curwen!” Mr. Curwen mounts the stairs to the landing with every sign of exhaustion, as if he had made a very quick run to and from his house. “Oh, he will help—I know he will! Oh, Mr. Curwen, the elevator is caught just below here with my aunt in it and Mrs. Miller’s husband”—
Lawton: “And my girl.”
Bemis: “And my boy.”
Mrs. Curwen, calling up: “And your wife!”
Curwen, horror-struck: “And my wife! Oh, heavenly powers! what are we going to do? How shall we get them out? Why don’t they come up?”
All: “They can’t.”
Curwen: “Can’t? Oh, my goodness!” He flies at the grating, and kicks and beats it. ”

“ Curwen: “For Mrs. Miller, for example.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “We women are too bad, always sending people back for something. It’s well the men don’t know how bad.”
Mrs. Curwen: “’Sh! Mr. Miller is listening. And he thought we were perfect. He asks nothing better than to be sent back for his wife’s fan. And he doesn’t say anything even under his breath when she finds she’s forgotten it, and begins, ‘Oh, dearest, my fan’—Mr. Curwen does. But he goes all the same. I hope you have your father in good training, Miss Lawton. ”

“ Lawton: “Yes, nothing would have kept me away when I heard Bemis was coming. But he doesn’t seem so inflexible in regard to me. Where is he?”
Mrs. Roberts: “I’m sure I don’t know. I’d no idea I was giving such a formal dinner. But everybody, beginning with my own aunt, seems to think it a ceremonious occasion. There are only to be twelve. Do you know the Millers?”
Lawton: “No, thank goodness! One meets some people so often that one fancies one’s weariness of them reflected in their sympathetic countenances. Who are these acceptably novel Millers?” ”

“ Roberts: “You might throw me a kiss.”
Roberts: “No; if it happened to strike on that train anywhere, it might spoil one of the folds. I can’t risk it.” A ring is heard at the apartment door. They spring to their feet simultaneously.
Mrs. Roberts: “There’s Aunt Mary now!” She calls into the vestibule, “Aunt Mary!”
Dr. Lawton, putting aside the vestibule portière, with affected timidity: “Very sorry. Merely a father.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh! Dr. Lawton? I am so glad to see you!” She gives him her hand: “I thought it was my aunt. We can’t understand why she hasn’t come. Why! where’s Miss Lawton?” ”

“ Roberts’s Aunt Mary (Mrs. Crashaw) , Mrs. Curwen, and Miss Lawton; Mr. Miller and Mr. Alfred Bemis are standing with their hats in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their arms, and the ladies’ draperies and ribbons show from under their outer wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe that it has stopped. ”

“ Roberts: “That’s true. And it would make a racket, and alarm the house”—staring desperately at the grated doorway of the shaft. “If I p. 200could only find an elevator man—an elevator builder! But of course they all live in the suburbs, and they’re keeping Christmas, and it would take too long, anyway.”
Bemis: “Hadn’t you better send for the police? It seems to me it’s a case for the authorities.”
Lawton: “Ah, there speaks the Europeanized mind! They always leave the initiative to the authorities. Go out and sound the fire-alarm, Roberts. It’s a case for the Fire Department.” ”

“ Miss Lawton: “Then mine will never behave, for papa is perfectly incorrigible.”
Mrs. Curwen: “I’m sorry to hear such a bad report of him. Shouldn’t you think he would be ‘good,’ Mr. Bemis?”
Young Mr. Bemis: “I should think he would try.”
Mrs. Curwen: “A diplomat, as well as a punster already! I must warn Miss Lawton.”
Mrs. Crashaw, interposing to spare the young people: “What an amusing thing elevator etiquette is! Why should the gentlemen take their hats off? Why don’t you take your hats off in a horse-car?”
Miller: “The theory is that the elevator is a room.” ”

“ That is not so, Edward.”
Lawton: “You defend your sex, as women always do. But you’ll admit that, as your friend, Mrs. Miller may have this foible.”
Mrs. Roberts: “I admit nothing of the kind. And we’ve invited another young couple who haven’t gone to housekeeping yet—the Curwens. And he has the same foible as Mrs. Miller.” Mrs. Roberts takes out her handkerchief, and laughs into it.
Lawton: “That is, if Mrs. Miller has it, which we both deny. Let us hope that Mrs. Miller and Mr. Curwen may not get to making eyes at each other.”
Roberts: “And Mr. Bemis and his son complete the list. ”

“ But I know pretty well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in a perambulator at three o’clock in the morning; and I guess our young lady lets the people below understand when she’s wakeful. But it’s the only way to live, after all. ”

“ Mrs. Curwen: “I can’t help it, Mrs. Crashaw. When I reflect that there are two thousand elevators in Boston, and that the inspectors have just pronounced a hundred and seventy of them unsafe, I’m so desperate when I get into one that I could—flirt!”
Miller, guarding himself with the fan: “Not with me?”
Miss Lawton, to young Mr. Bemis: “How it does creep!”
p. 187Young Mr. Bemis, looking down fondly at her: “Oh, does it?”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Why, it doesn’t go at all! It’s stopped. Let us get out.” They all rise.
The Elevator Boy, pulling at the rope: “We’re not there, yet.” ”

“ Mrs. Miller: “Tell Mr. Miller I found I had my fan after all.”
Curwen: “And Mrs. Curwen that I’ve got her glove all right.” He holds it up.
Mrs. Roberts, at a look of mystification and demand from her brother: “Never mind explanations, Willis. They’ll understand, and we’ll explain when you get back.”
Lawton, examining the glove which Curwen holds up: “Why, so it is right!”
p. 179Curwen: “What do you mean?”
Lawton: “Were you sent back to get a left glove?”
Curwen: “Yes, yes; of course.”
Lawton: “Well, if you’ll notice, this is a right one. The one at home is left.” ”

“ We can’t join in a cry, and rouse the whole house. It would be ridiculous.”
Mrs. Curwen: “And our present attitude is so eminently dignified! Well, I suppose we shall have to cast lots pretty soon to see which of us shall be sacrificed to nourish the survivors. It’s long past dinner-time.”
Miss Lawton, breaking down: “Oh, don’t say such terrible things.”
Young Mr. Bemis, indignantly comforting her: “Don’t, don’t cry. There’s no danger. It’s perfectly safe.”
Miller to The Elevator Boy: “Couldn’t you climb up the cable, and get on to the landing, and—ah!—get somebody?” ”

“ He staggers away from the grating and stays himself against the wall, the mistaken glove dangling limply from his hand.
Roberts, Lawton, and Bemis: “Ah! ha! ha! ha!”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh, for shame! to laugh at such a time!”
Mrs. Miller: “When it’s a question of life and death. There! The ringing’s stopped. What’s that?” Steps are heard mounting the stairway rapidly, several treads at a time. Mr. Campbell p. 207suddenly bursts into the group on the landing with a final bound from the stairway. “Oh!”
Campbell: “I can’t find Aunt Mary, Agnes. I can’t find anything—not even the elevator. ”

“ Is that you? It’s astonishing how little one makes of the husband of a lady who gives a dinner. In my time—a long time ago—he used to carve. But nowadays, when everything is served à la Russe, he might as well be abolished. Don’t you think, on the whole, Roberts, you’d better not have come?”
Roberts: “Well, you see, I had no excuse. I hated to say an engagement when I hadn’t any.”
Lawton: “Oh, I understand. You wanted to come. We all do, when Mrs. Roberts will let us.” He goes and sits down by Mrs. Roberts, who has taken a more provisional pose on the sofa. p. 165“Mrs. ”

“ I wouldn’t go back to the old up-and-down-stairs, house-in-a-block system on any account. Here we all live on the ground-floor practically. The elevator equalizes everything.”
Bemis: “Yes, when it happens to be where you are. I believe I prefer the good old Florentine fashion of walking upstairs, after all.”
Lawton: “Roberts, I did hear something. Hark! It sounded like a cry for help. There!”
p. 181Roberts: “You’re nervous, doctor. It’s nothing. However, it’s easy enough to go out and see.” He goes out to the door of the apartment, and immediately returns. He beckons to Dr. Lawton and Mr. ”