Theodore Dreiser

“ Theodore Dreiser is old—he is very, very old. I do not know how many years he has lived, perhaps thirty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old. Something gray and bleak and hurtful that has been in the world almost forever is personified in him. ”

“ Possibly matters would go into a lawyer's hands at once.
"Damn her!" he said softly, with his teeth firmly set, "I'll make it hot for her if she causes me trouble. I'll make her change her tone if I have to use force to do it!"
He arose from his chair and went and looked out into the street. The long drizzle had begun. Pedestrians had turned up collars, and trousers at the bottom. Hands were hidden in the pockets of the umbrellaless; umbrellas were up. The street looked like a sea of round black cloth roofs, twisting, bobbing, moving. ”

“ Orville Mason nodded.
"Roberta! My first born! My God! Our Heavenly Father!" His body crumpled as though from a blow and he leaned to steady himself against an adjacent tree. "But how? Where? In the factory by a machine? Oh, dear God!" He turned as though to go to his wife, while the strong, scar-nosed district attorney sought to detain him.
"One moment, Mr. Alden, one moment. You must not go to your wife yet. I know this is very hard, terrible, but let me explain. Not in Lycurgus. Not by any machine. No! No—drowned! In Big Bittern. She was up there on an outing on Thursday, do you understand? ”

“ I have faith too. I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He is yours. Though we die—yet shall we live!" She was looking heavenward, and seemed transfixed. Yet as suddenly turning to Clyde and gathering him in her arms and holding him long and firmly to her, whispering: "My son—my baby——" and her voice broke and trailed off into breathlessness—and her strength seemed to be going all to him, until she felt she must leave or fall——And so she turned quickly and unsteadily to the warden, who was waiting for her to lead her to Auburn friends of McMillan's. ”

“ It was as if he had put fifty cents in her hand and she had exercised the thoughts of a thousand dollars. She saw herself in a score of pathetic situations in which she assumed a tremulous voice and suffering manner. Her mind delighted itself with scenes of luxury and refinement, situations in which she was the cynosure of all eyes, the arbiter of all fates. As she rocked to and fro she felt the tensity of woe in abandonment, the magnificence of wrath after deception, the languour of sorrow after defeat. ”

“ He went into the front room, his bedroom, the parlour, lighting the gas as he went. From the chiffonier had gone the knick-knacks of silver and plate. From the table-top, the lace coverings. He opened the wardrobe—no clothes of hers. He opened the drawers—nothing of hers. Her trunk was gone from its accustomed place. Back in his own room hung his old clothes, just as he had left them. Nothing else was gone.
He stepped into the parlour and stood for a few moments looking vacantly at the floor. The silence grew oppressive. The little flat seemed wonderfully deserted. ”

“ Belknap rose to object, but Jephson pulled him down.
"Well, this is the truth, just the same."
"And no power under heaven could make you tell another lie here, of course—not a strong desire to save yourself from the electric chair?"
Clyde blanched and quivered slightly; he blinked his red, tired eyelids. "Well, I might, maybe, but not under oath, I don't think."
"You don't think! Oh, I see. Lie all you want wherever you are—and at any time—and under any circumstances—except when you're on trial for murder!"
"No, sir. It isn't that. But what I just said is so." ”

“ Her lips were as the pomegranate when it is newly cut, and her eyes as those deep pools into which the moon looks when it is night.”
“Yea, I have heard of such, in fairy-tales,” sighed Chudi, the baker, whose wife was as parchment that has cracked with age.
“And I, behind the walls of palaces and in far cities, but never here,” added Zad-el-Din, for neither his wife nor his daughters was any too fair to look upon. “They come not to Hodeidah.”
“Ay-ee, were any so beautiful,” sighed Al Tadjaz, “there would be no man worthy. But there are none.”
“Peace!” cried Ahmed. “Let us have the tale.” ”

“ They were on their way to Kansas, but it got so cold they've had to stop here until the winter is broken. They're without food; almost no clothing. Can't we find something for them?"
"On these occasions," said his daughter to me once, "he would, as he nearly always did, talk to himself on the way, as if he were discussing politics. But you could never tell what he was coming for."
Then with his own labor he would help his wife seek out the odds and ends that could be spared, and so armed, would return, arguing by the way as if an errand of mercy were the last thing he contemplated. ”

“ He could be most matter-of-fact at times.
"Oh, don't say sit down to me," commented Greta Miller, with a lofty smile and a gliding, dancing motion of her left foot, "with all the dates we got ahead of us this week. Oh, gee!" Her eyes and eyebrows went up and she clasped her hands dramatically before her. "It's just terrible, all the dancin' we gotta do yet this winter, don't we, Hortense? Thursday night and Friday night and Saturday and Sunday nights." She counted on her fingers most archly. "Oh, gee! It is terrible, really." She gave Clyde an appealing, sympathy-seeking smile. ”

“ By association with merchants and some superior politicians whom he chanced to encounter, and because the ward in which he lived happened to be a pivotal one, he began to speak publicly on occasion and to gather dimly the import of that logic which sees life as a pagan wild, and religion and convention as the forms man puts on or off to suit his fancy, mood, and whims during the onward drift of the ages. Not for Chaffee Thayer Sluss to grasp the true meaning of it all. His brain was not big enough. Men led dual lives, it was true ”

“ You are a brilliant man. I have always liked you. Why not be reasonable? Come now and let's drive over to Three Rivers and you take the train back to New York, will you?"
While Mrs. Dale had been talking, Eugene had been surveying her calmly. What a clever talker she was! How she could lie! He did not believe her. He did not believe one word that she said. She was fighting to keep him from Suzanne, why he could readily understand. Suzanne was somewhere, here, he fancied, though, as in the case of her recent trip to Albany, she might have been spirited away. ”

“ Tikka gharries rattled madly past him, whips were waved and turbans pushed awry; there were flashes of color from rich men’s gowns, as they hurried to select the choicest morsels, the clack of oryx-hide sandals, and the blunt beating of tom-toms. As the camels arrived in the near distance, the market was filled with a restless, yelling mob. Bedlam had broken loose, but a merry, good-natured bedlam at that. For khat, once obtained, would ease whatever ill feeling or morning unrest or weariness one might feel. ”

“ She walked into the wholesale district, but as the thought of applying came with each passing concern, her heart shrank. What a coward she was, she thought to herself. Yet she had applied so often. It would be the same old story. She walked on and on, and finally did go into one place, with the old result. She came out feeling that luck was against her. It was no use.
Without much thinking, she reached Dearborn Street. Here was the great Fair store with its multitude of delivery wagons about, its long window display, its crowd of shoppers. ”

“ By right of strength and malehood he was now practically master here, or so he felt himself to be. As he fingered the money he glowed and talked, thinking wondrous things, then suddenly remembering the concealed eight hundred, or his father’s part of it, he added, “Yes, an’ whar’s that other eight hundred, I’d like tuh know? He’s a-carryin’ it aroun’ with him er hidin’ it hyurabout mebbe!” Then eyeing the crumpled victim suspiciously, he began to feel in the old man’s clothes, but, not finding anything, desisted, saying they might get it later. ”

“ It was like his failing to wear his cap from Lycurgus to Utica, or at least getting it out of his bag before he tried to buy that straw hat; it was like not buying the straw hat before he went to Utica at all.
Yet the guide did not remember him, thank God! On the contrary he inquired rather curiously, and as of a total stranger: "Goin' over to the lodge at Big bittern? First time up here?" And Clyde, enormously relieved and yet really tremulous, replied: "Yes," and then in his nervous excitement asked: "Many people over there to-day?" ”

“ I know how these people feel toward me—their parents even. Do I really care for her? Is there not something about her quick and easy availability which, if not exactly dangerous in so far as my future here is concerned, is not quite satisfactory,—too quickly intimate?" He was experiencing a sensation not unrelated to his mood in connection with the lupanar in Kansas City—attracted and yet repulsed. He could do no more than kiss and fondle her here in a somewhat restrained way until at last Dillard and Zella returned, whereupon the same degree of intimacy was no longer possible. ”

“ I 'll git yuh a cup o' coffee. O' course your wife ain't here; but yuh come in an' sit down. I 'll find her fer yuh after a while. I know where she is."
The old farmer's eyes softened, and he entered. He was a thin, pantalooned, patriarchal specimen, and he took off his hat and laid it on his knees quite softly and mildly.
"We had a quarrel last night, and she left me," he volunteered.
"Laws! laws!" sighed Mrs. Race, there being no one present with whom to share her astonishment as she went to her kitchen. "The pore man! Now somebody's got to look after him. ”

“ He speculated on all this, but he could not decide whether it had any definite connection with him or any member of the family until about a week later, when, passing along Eleventh near Baltimore, he thought he saw Esta, or at least a girl so much like her that she would be taken for her anywhere. She had the same height, and she was moving along as Esta used to walk. Only, now he thought as he saw her, she looked older. Yet, so quickly had she come and gone in the mass of people that he had not been able to make sure. ”

“ I know her."
"All right, now. Hurry right back."
"Any answer?"
"I guess not."
The boy hastened away and the manager fell to his musings. Now he had done it. There was no use speculating over that. He was beaten for to-night and he might just as well make the best of it. But, oh, the wretchedness of being forced this way! He could see her meeting the boy at the door and smiling sardonically. She would take the envelope and know that she had triumphed. If he only had that letter back he wouldn't send it. He breathed heavily and wiped the moisture from his face. ”

“ Useless contention with an unyielding soil had done its best at hardening their spirits.
“I don’t see no use ploughin’ the south patch,” Dode had now remarked for the third time this spring. “The blamed thing don’t grow nuthin’.”
“Ef yuh only half ’tended it instid o’ settin’ out thar under them thar junipers pickin’ yer teeth an’ meditatin’, mebbe ’twould,” squeaked Mrs. Queeder, always petulant or angry or waspish—a nature soured by long and hopeless and useless contention.
“No use shakin’ up a lot uv rocks, ez I see,” returned [Pg 252] Dode, wearily and aimlessly slapping at a fly. ”

“ Some folks condemn him for this, and for not giving everything to his wife and them orphans he has, but I always thought the man was nearer right than most of us. I've got a family myself—but, then, so's he, now, for that matter. It's pretty hard to live up to your light always."
He looked away as if he expected some objection to be made to this, but hearing none, he went on. "I always liked him personally very much. He ain't around here now any more—lives up in Norwich, I think. He's a man of his word, though, as truthful as kin be. ”

“ An’ us a-workin’ hyur year in an’ year out on this hyur ol’ place tuh keep him comfortable!” She was no less hard in her glances than her brother. Her father seemed little less than a thief, attempting to rob them of the hard-earned fruit of their toil.
As the lawyer took the paper from Dode and spread it upon the old board table and handed Queeder a pen the latter took it aimlessly, quite as a child might have, and [Pg 283] made his mark where indicated, Mr. Giles observing very cautiously, “This is of your own free will and deed, is it, Mr. Queeder?” The old man made no reply. ”

“ Lester looked at him where he lay in the great parlor, in his black coffin, and a feeling of the old-time affection swept over him. He smiled at the clean-cut, determined, conscientious face.
“The old gentleman was a big man all the way through,” he said to Robert, who was present. “We won’t find a better figure of a man soon.”
“We will not,” said his brother, solemnly.
After the funeral it was decided to read the will at once. Louise’s husband was anxious to return to Buffalo; Lester was compelled to be in Chicago. ”

“ In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed attendant with an uplifted arm.
"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an idiot?"
"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he won't do it."
"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that, and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. ”