Gaslight Sonatas

"If they land me in the bug-house, they can write on your tombstone when you die, 'Hanna Long Burkhardt went stark raving mad crazy with hucking at home because I let her life g...

"Aw, now, Jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. It--it's only my--my fear that I'm losing you, and--and my hate for the every-day grind of things, and--"

Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a fraternity pin pretended to lic...

At something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to the moving light of a lamp held...

"How she plays favorite, it's a shame. I wish you'd look, too, Mrs. Finshriber, how Flora Proskauer carries away from the table her glass of milk with slice bread on top. I tell...

"Now there's nothin' to worry about, Babe. Have I ever landed anywhere but on my feet? We'll be driving a racer down Broadway again before the winter's over. There's money in mo...

"Lay easy, girl. I'm going to see it through. I guess there's been fellows before me and will be after me who have done worse. I'm going to see it through. All I got to say is I...

"When--when you lost out that time five years ago on 'Pan-America' and I seen how Linger made a fortune out of it, I says to myself, 'It can never happen again.' You remember th...

In her white slip of a nightdress, her coronet braids unwound and falling down each shoulder, even her slightness had waned. She was like Juliet who at fourteen had eyes of maid...

"You should worry, girl! I'm going to make you the million-dollar baby doll of this town, I am. If they turn their backs, we'll dazzle 'em from behind. I'm going to buy you ever...

"I--I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but--but--oh, hang!--when a fellow's a senior it--it's all he can do to get home once in a while and--and--what's the use t...

Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the...

When Selene Coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic scene, the two jets of gas were s...

Outside, not even to be gainsaid by Sixth Avenue, the night was like a moist flower held to the face. A spring shower, hardly fallen, was already drying on the sidewalks, and fr...

"No, no; not a cent from you--for myself. I--I didn't know you in them days for nothing. I was only a kid, but I--I know you! I know. You gimme! Gimme!"

Her skirts delicately lifted, Miss Coblenz stepped down off the dais. With her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded "Springtime," done in the key of...