First harvests

On the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-second Street, just where the long rise of the avenue begins, and vanishes in higher perspective like the stage of a theatre,...

There was a time when Mrs. Gower was not fashionable. It is necessary, for our purpose, to go back to these dark ages. Her maidenhood was passed in unobtrusive splendor behind a...

T. Levison Gower, Jr., the Perseus to our Andromeda, that angel who was to take Flossie’s hand and lift her with him to a higher sphere, was a pallid young man with a long nose,...

When the living poet and the dead came out to see the stars once more, the Florentine found himself upon a grassy slope, alone in the early morning, with his silent guide. So, w...

A man’s grand life, says someone, is a dream of his youth realized in and by his later years; what then shall we say of a woman’s? Think not on this; but let your soul answer. T...

Judge Holyoke sat in his library, trying to reconcile good law with good conscience by distinguishing the present case, in which the plaintiff was clearly in the right, from a f...

It was near the end of the first hour in the New York Stock Exchange. The floor was crowded. A few of the young brokers, who had less business and more time, having executed the...

The firm of Townley & Tamms were of the oldest and best-known bankers and brokers in the Street. Mr. Townley had been known in New York over fifty years; he had a taste for art,...

There should never be more than six at a dinner, unless there are fourteen. You can have your dinner either a parlor comedy or a spectacular play: but you must choose which you...

Now Mrs. Levison Gower, like Napoleon after Marengo and Austerlitz, was suffering from ennui. This malady of modern times executes its most dangerous ravages, like the gout, onl...

Sunday was a long-looked-for day to Arthur. It was only the second Sunday after his arrival in New York; but it was as if he had been many months in the city already; and on the...

Meantime a discussion upon society in general and other things in particular, something like that of Haviland and Townley, was going on in the back shop of the little brick stor...

John Haviland was a banker down-town, a man of much business and of few intimate friends. He was over thirty at this time, and made no sign of getting married; which was the str...

Arthur Holyoke was making his way. Despite Charlie’s admonitions to the contrary, he had succeeded in living within his income; and, after a six months’ trial at the office, the...

Paris had palled upon Mr. Caryl Wemyss, and in February he returned to New York. Paris, he found, had deteriorated since the Empire. Moreover, his social position there was not...

Gracie was sitting alone in her own room; she had been reading--the “Faery Queene” the book--but it had slipped from her hand--and now she was thinking. Not of herself, but of o...

Spring had come. Theatres were fuller, the opera not so full; dancing parties were less frequent, and there began to be talk of races and of country parties; it was no longer a...

Arthur awoke the next morning with a confused consciousness of splendors and regret; a mood which seemed superinduced by some forgotten dream. His first perceptions, however, we...

Several days passed by in much the same way; and truly a pleasant way enough it was. Arthur went now and then to town; but it was easy to get vacations in Townley & Tamms’s offi...

The coach drew up at the little wharf at Garrison’s, and the party got into the ferry-boat and were carried across the river. The great hotel at West Point had been opened; the...

The days were growing unnumbered by this time, measure of time being only necessary when one has daily petty duties, and existence is not a continuous, untroubled joy. Arthur po...

Charlie Townley’s ways were not like the ways of other young stock-brokers. He worked at the most unusual times, and usually made ostentation of idleness. Many others much delig...

“You had better not go back to-day,” said Mr. Tamms to Charlie when he came down in the morning. “They can get along without you at the office; besides, I should like you to dri...

Gracie had looked forward with a yearning she would not even to herself allow to the summer and her coming to her father’s home once more. There are times when rocks and woods a...

John Haviland was in town that summer. Many things kept him there; he had his own business, and he had his schools, and he had his workmen’s clubs. And just now he had, more tha...

Flossie Gower lay idly upon her couch; it was her reception-day. She was waiting for the monotonous round of callers; and, while she waited, she gave herself to reminiscences. I...

James Starbuck’s breach with his sister had been a permanent one. He probably had as little affection in his nature as any man you could well find; but what he had was centred i...

Arthur was thinking of getting up a little dinner for some of his most worthy friends and most valuable acquaintances, and he was sitting in the reading room of his favorite clu...

The autumn winds began; winds that in the country bring red leaves, and ripening nuts, and smells of cider, and the crisp white frost; and in the city come with clouds of pungen...

John Haviland, too, was working very hard that fall. He was not perhaps so happy even as Charles Townley, if this is any reason for hard work. And have I not said that we all wo...

The new year has come; and all the world has been celebrating, with children’s dances and with children’s dinners and with a multiplicity of costly toys, the birth of Christ. Gr...

Charlie Townley had no rest on New Year’s day. His sleep had been troubled, that night after Tamms’s dinner; and he was kept awake, by the danger that he saw, ignorant of the gr...

The evening of the great ball has come, at last; all the preparations have been made to the very last touch; the thousand orchids have arrived, that are to fade away their costl...

The carriage had been in waiting some half an hour; the coachman, who could not leave his horses, was swearing upon the box, while the footman sought the shelter of the area doo...

The rain, that had come after the snow, had ceased in its turn, blown clear, like some light curtain, by a blast of northwest wind. Mr. Wemyss, as he entered the carriage, had v...

When Jem Starbuck, that evening, had been thrust out by his friends, and the door he heard slammed and bolted behind him, he found himself upon Sixth Avenue, at midnight of a ni...

The following day, early in the afternoon, Lionel Derwent walked into the Columbian Club. It was a place that he did not usually frequent, though he had a stranger’s membership;...

When the train had fairly started, that morning, Flossie sank back into her seat with a certain sensation of relief. Almost immediately, they entered the long tunnel under the c...

Flossie had given the driver the address of her only cousin she remembered; a certain Mrs. Lyman, whose husband she believed was some instructor or professor at some college, sh...

No sheriff’s warrant was ever served on Mr. Townley. Lionel Derwent took care of that, and stayed with him (for he was childless) for some few weeks, until the old man died, of...