Potsherd

“ The possibility, however, had not been overlooked, since she took the precaution to lock the door after her."
"A clever rogue!" I declared. "But wasn't the first attempt—for I suppose we must classify the mysterious arm under that head—more than a trifle indiscreet?"
"No doubt," agreed Lesty. "But we didn't know, then, that Zeda was in London, and the flat was still unfurnished. Also, they may have thought Halesowen was in bed; or the woman (whom he has so cleverly kept out of sight) may have exceeded her instructions in attempting to touch the potsherd while any one remained in the room." ”

“ Pottage came in as magnificent as a queen-dowager in black satin to ask if her lodgers would give her the pleasure of their company in the parlour.
“I’ve got a few friends coming in to celebrate Christmas. Mrs. Bugbird’s here, and two of my unintendeds—Mr. Hopkins, the chandler—well, I thought I’d ask him, though he’s no more addition to anything than a nought, which is what he looks like—and then there’s Mr. Watcher. Yes, Watcher’s a good name for him, for he watches me like a dog watches a bone. He and Mr. Hopkins can’t bear the sight of one another. ”

“ Potts stood for a moment staring.
“The devil you do!” he cried, at last. “Come, I call that good, rich, racy! Will your sublime Excellency have the kindness to explain yourself? If my life is in your hand it’s in a devilish lean and weak one. It strikes me you’ve got some kink in your brain—some notion or other. Out with it, and let us see what you’re driving at!”
“Do you know a man named Cigole?” said Langhetti.
“Cigole!” replied Potts, after a pause, in which he had stared hard at Langhetti; “well, what if I do? ”

“ Ours is an age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will not.”
“I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts.”
“Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe all your griefs to your godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to give you a passport. Where do you wish to go?”
“I wish, first of all, to go to Como.” ”

“ In Potemkin's fatherland the art of government consists principally in hiding the truth not only from the people, but also from the Czar, who must be made to believe that he really strives for the welfare of the people, and not only for that of the all-powerful bureaucracy. Potemkin's art, as is well known, consisted in deceitfully showing to his beloved Empress, in a long journey, prosperous peasant farms, where in reality wretchedness and misery had established their permanent home. ”

“ Jacob Potts replied firmly. "It's no job of yourn to tell me wot to do. You know very well there's just one thing I stick at, and I asks you a plain question, Sid, and a plain answer expected. Is that bundle you're carrying a woman, or ain't it?"
"It's a woman," the man proclaimed doggedly, "and it's going on board the 'Amsterdam.'"
The answer of Jacob Potts was bellicose and unprintable. He strode along the little wharf, followed by Aaron Rodd and Cresswell. Behind came the man called Sid, his face darker and more evil than ever, his breath coming short with anger. ”

“ So I says, well, I says, if you don't want to ring 'em up I'll ring 'em up; and she says I should mind my own business. So then I says, if you wouldn't ring 'em up and I wouldn't ring 'em up I'll do this for you, Miss Atkinson: You and me will go for an oitermobile ride, I says, and we'll have just so good a time as if Potash & Perlmutter was paying for it. And so we did, Abe. I took Miss Atkinson up to the Heatherbloom Inn, and it costed me thirty dollars, Abe, including a cigar, which I wouldn't charge you nothing for. ”

“ Pottsville consists of a single street, lying in a somewhat narrow vale on the right shore of the Schuylkill, and owes its name to a Mr. Pott, who commenced the first iron works. The entrances of two coal-mines are seen on the shore opposite the place; there are some which, however, are not worked on account of scarcity of labourers. I became acquainted in our tavern with a Mr. Baker from New York, who is one of the chief men in this undertaking, as well as with a Mr. ”

“ Hallo! What's the matter with you, Potts? Your mouth and shirt are all stained with blood!"
"Oh, nothing," said Potts, forgetting himself. "I just lost a tooth, and—"
"You lost a—Who pulled it?" asked the doctor.
"Gentlemen," said Potts, "the fact is I shot it out with my gun."
Then they put Potts under bail for attempted assassination, and Dingus said that as soon as he got well he would bang Mr. Potts with a club. When the crowd had gone, the coroner said to Potts,
"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?" ”

“ Last night Jesse came home from Vancouver, and it being Sunday evening, he read and expounded the Scriptures to the amazement of the three new ranch-hands. The Chinamen, being heathens, were let off.
"Not being wise in the ways of high society, I ain't free to comment on Mrs. Potiphar, who kep' a steward instead of doing her job as housekeeper, or on this General Sir Something Potiphar, C.O.D., C.P.R., H.B.C., P.D.Q., commanding the Haw-Haw Guards, who seems to neglect his missus. As a plain stockman I pursues after Joseph." ”

“ No longer were the inhabitants of Potsham gently little in a little place, but in a little place aped the follies of great cities. People and place were no longer in harmony. Men and women seemed continually to be adjusting themselves to an outside standard. They were as sluggards who protest their wakefulness. . . . But for Francis and Martha, Potsham was as it had been in their youth, a place of sleep, of tranquil sleep attended by pleasant dreams [Pg 342] of roses and blue water and warm figs ripening in the sunlight mellowed by the soft, moist air. ”

“ He folded his arms, and said nothing.
“You appear to have been mistaken in your man,” said the stranger, coolly. “These are not your servants; they’re mine. Shall I tell them to seize you?”
Potts glared at him with bloodshot eyes, but said nothing.
“Shall I tell them to pull up your sleeve and display the mark of Bowhani, Sir? Shall I tell who and what you are? Shall I begin from your birth and give them a full and complete history of your life?”
Potts looked around like a wild beast in the arena, seeking for some opening for escape, but finding nothing except hostile faces. ”

“ Did the magic and mystery of the opal make so little appeal to him? Michael's eyes went from their reverent and adoring observation of the stone in his hands, to Potch as he sat stooping over the book on the table before him. He could not understand why Potch was not fired by the beauty of the thing he had won, or with pride at having found the biggest knobby ever taken out of the fields.
Any other young man would have been beside himself with excitement and rejoicing. But here was Potch slouched over a dog-eared, paper-covered book. ”

“ The tory perceived the fainting of his heart, and laughed:
"I never did harm to you or yours, Dan Potts," he said; "but you shall never say so more. You would sell the blood of a dying man—you must first win it."
With that, he relaxed his grasp on the raftsman's right hand, as if for the purpose of seizing him by the throat; and Potts took instant advantage of the motion, to snatch his knife from its sheath. The motion was a trick of juggling, such as the outlaw had learned among the red associates of his boyhood, and perhaps practised in similar encounters before. ”

“ Those very first questions of his, when he sat peering out at me through the mosquito-netting of his bed, didn’t seem to come from a man who had life before him. And when I had got those early details out of him, I somehow felt sure he’d go. I’m no pessimist; but I didn’t see life giving him a second chance. It was too much to hope that life would let him make good after all. And yet—he so nearly did. Damn fever!...
“Madame Pothier did everything she could. She was a good sort. I’ve always wondered, as much as it is permitted to wonder, whether she felt anything for Paramore. ”

“ The fete holds Potiphar, whose duties press And keep him captive till the set of sun; Whilst I, a-faint, the privilege of my sex, Await thee here, knowing thy daily round Had naught to stay it in the priestly show. For what, to thee, the mummified Gods of On? Art thou not servant to a mightier lord? Nor thyself art seen, nor offerings from thee grace The inner shrines. ”

“ Harold toiled on with grunts and contortions, and presently produced in triumph a small grey elephant and a large beetle with a red stomach.
"They're jammed in too tight," he complained. "Can't get any more out. But as I came up I'm sure I felt Potiphar!" And down he dived again.
Potiphar was a finely modelled bull with a suède skin, rough and comfortable and warm in bed. He was my own special joy and pride, and I thrilled with honest emotion when Potiphar emerged to light once more, stout-necked and stalwart as ever.
"That'll have to do," said Charlotte, getting up. ”

“ Prosnauer," he cried as he burst into Prosnauer's office in the cloak department, "my name is Mr. Potash, of Potash & Perlmutter, from New York. Did you seen it my salesman, Marks Pasinsky?"
"Sit down, Mr. Potash," Prosnauer said, "and don't excite yourself."
"I ain't exciting myself," Abe exclaimed. "I don't got to excite myself, Mr. Prosnauer. I am excited enough already when I think to myself that that lowlife Pasinsky takes my samples out of my store and comes here with my money and gets an order from you for four thousand dollars for Klinger & Klein." ”

“ Potiphar’s is, in some ways, better than going shopping. You see more new and costly things in a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a chair!” “What a darling table!” “What a heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease their husbands to get things precisely like them. When Kurz Pacha the Sennaar Minister, came to a dinner at my house, he said:
“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house is just like your neighbor’s.”
I know it. I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference between my house and Croesus’s, than there is in two ten dollar bills of the same bank. ”

“ Her figure wavered in the doorway. Before either Potch or Michael could speak she had come into the hut. It was Maud, Jun Johnson's wife. She stood there on the threshold of the room, her loose, dark hair wind-blown, her eyes, laughing, the red line of her mouth trembling with a smile. Her eyes went from Michael to Potch, who had turned away.
"My old nanny's awful bad, Potch," she said. "They say there's no one on the Ridge knows as much about goats as you. Will you come along and see what you can do for her?" ”

“ But we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the end of the story) ; but for all that, we know that Potts plays an enormous part in ourselves and in the world, and that the social problem is not a problem of story-book heroes of the older pattern, but a problem of Pottses, and of how to make men of them. ”

“ We have been here only a few weeks, and we already know all the fashionable shops, and a little more French, and we go to the confectioners, and eat savarins every morning at 12, and we drive in the Bois de Boulogne in the afternoon, and we dine splendidly, and in the evening we go to the opera or a theatre. To be sure, we don’t have much society beside our own party. But then the shop-girls point out the distinguished women to Mrs. Potiphar, so that she can point them out when we drive ”

“ By the bye, pretty strain that from Linda; tum tum, ti, tum tum,” and away hopped the Sennaar minister.
Mrs. Potiphar was angry. Who wouldn’t have been? To have the old family shoes thrown in one’s teeth! But our ambassador is an ambassador. One must have the best society, and she swallowed it as she has swallowed it a hundred times before. She quietly remarked—
“Pity Kurz Pacha drinks so abominably. He quite forgets what he’s saying!”
I suppose he does, if Mrs. P. says so; but he seems to know well enough all the time: as he did that evening in the library at Mrs. ”

“ The perfection of civilization has not yet mounted the stairs. It is confined to the dining-room. How beautiful is that strain from the Favorita, Miss Minerva, tum, tum, ti ti, tum tum, tee tee,” and the delightful Sennaar ambassador, seeing Mrs. Potiphar in the parlor, danced humming away.
There are few pleasanter men in society. I should think with his experience he would be hard upon us, but he is not. The air of courts does not seem to have spoiled him.
“My dear madam,” he said one evening to Mrs. Potiphar, “if you laugh at anything, your laughing is laughed at next day. Life is short. ”

“ Potts seating himself limply on the steps and fanning himself with his broad straw hat—a hat that in its very largeness and looseness seemed to express the inflexible ideals of non-conformity—while Mrs. Potts, very firmly busked and bridled, her head very sleek, her smile very tight, took a chair between Mrs. Upton and Sir Basil, and soon showed, in her whole demeanor, a consciousness of the latter's small titular decoration that placed her more definitely for Imogen's eye than she had ever been placed before. The Pottses were middle-class with a vengeance. ”