Axidava

The Crystal Flask

Paul Rosenwey

Young Gwilliam, fresh and brown from his two years in the wilds, and with two inches added to his chest measure, hurried to the club and searched for Drysdale. He found his Petronius sitting just as he had left him, in the accustomed well-cushioned chair, in the accustomed corner, on his face the accustomed quiet, faintly amused smile. Gwillam drew up a chair opposite; the necessary ceremonies were performed, and then they plunged into one of those long garrulous gossips, which they both liked so well.

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On Being In Love

Jerome K. Jerome

You’ve been in love, of course! If not you’ve got it to come. Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time.

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The Nomad

Robert Hichens

The fate of Madame Lemaire had certainly not been an ordinary one. She was French, of Marseilles, as you could tell by her accent, especially when she said “C’est bien!” and had been an extremely coquettish and lively girl, with a strong will of her own and a passionate love of pleasure and of town life. From her talk when she was seventeen, you would have gathered that if she ever moved from Marseilles it would be to go to Paris. Nothing else would be good enough for her. She felt herself born to play a part in some great city.

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A Twilight Idyl

Robert Jones Burdette

One summer evening, Mr. Ellis Henderson, a popular young man, went out walking with two of the sweetest girls in town. Mr. Henderson wore a little straw hat with a navy blue band, a cutaway coat, a pair of white trousers, a white vest, a buttonhole bouquet, and fifteen cents. The evening was very hot, and as they walked, they talked about the baseball match, the weather, and sunstrokes. By and by one of the young ladies gave a delicate little shriek.

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Passionate Paragraphs

Stephen Leacock

(An extract from a recent (very recent) novel, illustrating the new beauties of language and ideas that are being rapidly developed by the twentieth century press.)

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A Lover’s Quarrel

Cynthia Coles

“O Kitty, you are so sweet, and I do love you so. Tell me you love me, dearie.”

“I do love you, Dick; why, I never supposed I could love anybody so much.”

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Aristotle

Ion Culiță Parpalache

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

— Aristotle

“Aristotle was a homo.”

— Richard Nixon

What The Vandals Leave

Herbert Riley Howe

The war was over, and he was back in his native city that had been retaken from the Vandals. He was walking rapidly through a dimly lit quarter. A woman touched his arm and accosted him in fuddled accents.

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The Mariposa Bank Mystery

Stephen Leacock

Suicide is a thing that ought not to be committed without very careful thought. It often involves serious consequences, and in some cases brings pain to others than oneself.

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The One Left

E. V. Lucas

He had become very ill—could hardly move from where he lay; and she, who loved him, and was to have married him, and spent all her waking hours in thinking what she could do for him, persuaded him to have a telephone installed and brought to his bedside so that he and she could talk, and he could talk with others, too. Every night he rang her up and they had a long conversation; many times in the day also. Nothing, as it happened, could have saved his life, but this modern device lightened his last weeks.

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Vitalis And Marie Boyer

H. B. Irving

I found the story of this case in a brochure published in Paris as one of a series of modern causes celebres. I have compared it with the reports of the trial in the Gazette des Tribunaux.

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The Way Of A Woman

Byron W. King

It was the last night before leap-year; it was the last hour before leap-year; in fact, the minute-hand had moved round the dial face of the clock until it registered fifteen minutes of twelve,—fifteen minutes of leap-year. John and Mary were seated in Mary’s father’s parlor. There was plenty of furniture there but they were using only a limited portion of it. John watched the minute-hand move round the dial face of the clock until, like the finger of destiny, it registered fifteen minutes of twelve,—fifteen minutes of leap-year, when he gasped hard, clutched his coat collar, and said,—

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Her Lover

Maxim Gorky

An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story.

When I was a student at Moscow I happened to live alongside one of those ladies whose repute is questionable. She was a Pole, and they called her Teresa.

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The Secret Meeting

Many-As-One

— At my place, in two hours. It is all arranged. I told security that we will meet in secret to discuss the war in Ukraine. They will not disturb us.

— OK. What about your wife?

— My wife will be there but she will be sleeping. She is very old.

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The Sunny Side Of The Hill

Frank Crane

“I live,” said a friend, “on the sunny side of the hill.”

Why not? Every hill has two sides. It may be a long way around to the other one, but it’s there. Move! Why live in the gloom?

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Ghitza

Konrad Bercovici

That winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze solid a week before Christmas and remained tight for five months. It was as if the blue waters were suddenly turned into steel.

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Venus At The Domestic Hearth

H. L. Mencken

One inclines to the notion that women—and especially homely women—greatly overestimated the importance of physical beauty in their eternal conspiracy against the liberty of men.

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The Ebony Frame

E. Nesbit

To be rich is a luxurious sensation—the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist—all callings utterly inconsistent with one’s family feeling and one’s direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy.

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Spanish Women

Anonymous

As the Spanish ladies are under a greater seclusion from general society, than the sex is in other European countries, their desires of an adequate degree of liberty are consequently more strong and urgent. A free and open communication being denied them, they make it their business to secure themselves a secret and hidden one. Hence it is that Spain is the country of intrigue.

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Marriage And Love

Emma Goldman

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.

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The Swamp

Ion Culiță Parpalache

“The swamp is a beastly place. It’s ripe with things nobody wants to know.”

— Deb Spera

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Dave Grohl, The Cheater

Pacoste

Dave Grohl cheated on his wife of 21 years with some bitch and a new creature spawned into existence, alongside a new burden. It is the curse of Donald Trump.

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Love And Bread

August Strindberg

When young Gustaf Falk, the assistant councilor, made his ceremonial proposal for Louise’s hand to her father, the old gentleman’s first question was: “How much are you earning?”

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The Haunted Orchard

Richard Le Gallienne

Spring was once more in the world. As she sang to herself in the faraway woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the long winter. Daffodils flowered at the entrances to the Subway, furniture removing vans blocked the side streets, children clustered like blossoms on the doorsteps, the open cars were running, and the cry of the “cash clo'” man was once more heard in the land.

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How To Avoid Getting Married

Stephen Leacock

Some years ago, when I was the Editor of a Correspondence Column, I used to receive heart-broken letters from young men asking for advice and sympathy.

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Belinda

Franklin P. Adams

I remember Belinda. She was arguing with another young woman about the car fare. “Let me pay,” said Belinda; and she paid.

“There,” I mused, “is a perfect woman, nobly planned.”

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Anne

Franklin P. Adams

In winter, when the ground was white,
I thought that Anne would be all right;
In summer, quite the other way,
I knew she’d never be O. K.

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The Ideal Woman

Frank Crane

The ideal woman is lovable. She may not be beautiful of face, but she has charm.

She is attractive to men, not repellent.

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