Jessamine: A Novel

In the plenitude of her cousinly compassion for the lonely husband, Mrs. Baxter coaxed her spouse into escorting her to Mr. Fordham's, on Thursday evening. The wind had settled...

"You find us, in humble imitation of Mr. Turveydrop, still using our little arts to polish--polish!" said Jessie Kirke, mimicking the famous trowel gesture of the Professor of D...

"I knocked at Mr. Fordham's door, ma'am, as you bid, and he said that he wasn't well enough to leave his room, and would you be pleased to eat breakfast without him. And he said...

There was no prettier spot in the Dundee valley than Willow Creek, a somewhat wide, and in some places deep, stream, just where it was spanned by a rustic bridge at the bottom o...

Orrin Wyllys could afford to laugh at criticism that would have provoked a thin-skinned, or moderately-vain man to anger, if not to hatred. For he was aware that his cousin had...

A less vain man than Mr. Wyllys would have been flattered by the effect produced upon the spiritless, faded creature, the mocking shadow of the old blithesome Jessie, by half an...

"And you have really been to Dundee!" Jessie was saying, unconscious that she was clinging to Mr. Wyllys' arm--very slightly, but perceptibly to him, with the glad hold of one t...

Roy Fordham remained ten days longer in Dundee in consequence of an arrangement made by his brother professors by which they divided his duties among them. Dr. Baxter, whose par...

"I am not sick, but I have had much to think of and to do, lately, and I may look somewhat jaded," he answered. "You left Eunice well, you say?"

Mr. Kirke and Eunice were still absent when Orrin paid his second call at the Parsonage that day. He had conducted Jessie home in the forenoon--a drenched and shivering figure,...

Orrin kept step with her for several moments, studying the eyes that, black and disdainful, stared straight before her, and the mouth set in a close curve of pride, before he sp...

Judge Provost, whose wife and daughters were the leaders of fashion in Hamilton, was himself a social Greatheart. Having brought to bear upon various vexed domestic problems the...

Spring was forward in Hamilton that year. Mrs. Baxter, walking on the presidential portico at noon of a bright day in the third week of April complimented the extraordinary beni...

Dr. Septimus Baxter was President of Marion College, situate in the beautiful town of Hamilton, lying two hundred miles to the northward, and in another state than the mountain-...

Mr. Wyllys was careful not to repeat his visit within a week. He could trust to the natural growth of the seed he had sown, and he was too politic to appear solicitous, on his o...

A young girl lay upon a lounge in the recess of an oriel-window. If disease held her there, it had not altered the contour of the smooth cheek, or made shallow the dimples in wr...

The "breaking down" predicted by Dr. Winters, took the form, not of hysterical emotion, as he had anticipated, but of physical languor and spiritual apathy, which were more alar...

"My darling!" casting her entire weight against his chest, a hand upon each shoulder, and putting up a tight knot of a mouth for the kiss marital. "What an eternity you have bee...

The road and church-yard were full of the retiring crowd, and a group of three persons was at the wicket-gate. A white-haired man, of dignified and benign presence, bowed somewh...

The third Sabbath in October was bland and bright as June. Roy, who had arrived in Dundee on Saturday evening, invited his wife to a stroll in the garden with him after the disp...

Every object in the dimly lighted chamber seemed, to Jessie's strained eyes, to stand out with painful distinctness, as her long-absent lover entered. Most clearly of all, she s...

"Orrin brought me to the door," she said, divesting herself of her fur cloak, and untying the coquettish hood that half covered her head. "I knew Mr. Fordham would be at the mee...

A week had passed since the Dundee Centennial, and life in the parsonage had been in outward aspect like the weather--still and sunny. The oldest Dundeeian had never known befor...

"It will be very unpleasant travelling in the rain!" she remarked as he entered. "The sun went down behind a portentous bank of clouds. And the wind is veering to the storm-quar...

The September nights were cool among the mountains, and as Mr. Kirke and his elder daughter drove home through the moonlight, between eleven and twelve o'clock, from the visit o...

Greatly perturbed, Fanny returned to the circle of gossips. They had not recommenced their game, but were standing about, and leaning upon the billiard-table, busily rehearsing...

"It is a foot deep in the street," she said. "The evergreens in the Campus are loaded; the firs and junipers are like enormous sugar-loaves, and some of the slighter trees--ceda...