Chapter One Nothing could have been more painful to my sensitiveness than to occupy myself, confused with blushes, at the center of the whole world as a living advertisement of the least amusing ballet in Paris. To be the day’s sensation of the boulevards one must possess an eccentricity of appearance conceived by nothing short […]

I. A Change of Lodging The glass-domed “palm-room” of the Grand Continental Hotel Magnifique in Rome is of vasty heights and distances, filled with a mellow green light which filters down languidly through the upper foliage of tall palms, so that the two hundred people who may be refreshing or displaying themselves there at the […]

Mme. Bernhardt and M. Coquelin were playing “L’Aiglon.” Toward the end of the second act people began to slide down in their seats, shift their elbows, or casually rub their eyes; by the close of the third, most of the taller gentlemen were sitting on the small of their backs with their knees as high […]

When Alonzo Tawson took his seat as the Senator from Stackpole in the upper branch of the General Assembly of the State, an expression of pleasure and of greatness appeared to be permanently imprinted upon his countenance. He felt that if he had not quite arrived at all which he meant to make his own, […]

It isn’t the party manager, you understand, that gets the fame; it’s the candidate. The manager tries to keep his candidate in what the newspapers call a “blaze of publicity”; that is, to keep certain spots of him in the blaze, while sometimes it is the fact that a candidate does not know much of […]

Far back in his corner on the Democratic side of the House, Uncle Billy Rollinson sat through the dragging routine of the legislative session, wondering what most of it meant. When anybody spoke to him, in passing, he would answer, in his gentle, timid voice, “Howdy-do, sir.” Then his cheeks would grow a little red […]

Pietro Tobigili, that gay young chestnut vender–he of the radiant smiles–gave forth, in his warm tenor, his own interpretation of “Ach du lieber Augustine,” whenever Bertha, rosy waitress in the little German restaurant, showed her face at the door. For a month it had been a courtship; and the merchant sang often: “Ahaha, du libra […]

I guess I’ve been what you might call kind of an assistant boss pretty much all my life; at least, ever since I could vote; and I was something of a ward-heeler even before that. I don’t suppose there’s any way a man of my disposition could have put in his time to less advantage […]

Chapter One The young Frenchman did very well what he had planned to do. His guess that the Duke would cheat proved good. As the unshod half-dozen figures that had been standing noiselessly in the entryway stole softly into the shadows of the chamber, he leaned across the table and smilingly plucked a card out […]

I For a lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who caught it may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which brings within the boundaries of one November week the Horse Show and the roaring climax of the football months and the more dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the opera season. Some throbbing […]