The Diplomat: “Oh, let us form an everlasting alliance.”
The Soldier: “You gave my heart an incurable wound; or ‘you came; I saw; you conquered.’”
The Doctor: “Only you can cure my suffering heart.”
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
(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.)
(more…)
“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.”
(more…)She is “the table”.
And she doesn’t understand why you wouldn’t want a woman like her.
(more…)
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
— Aristotle
“Aristotle was a homo.”
— Richard Nixon
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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,—
(more…)
— 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.
(more…)
“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?
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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?”
(more…)
Of all the other Asiatics, the Chinese have, perhaps the best title to modesty.
(more…)
Girls are very stuckup and dignefied in their manner and behaveyour.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
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.
(more…)
The ideal woman is lovable. She may not be beautiful of face, but she has charm.
She is attractive to men, not repellent.
(more…)
The empty vial—the odour of bitter almonds—and in the chair what had been a man.
(more…)
