Off Sandy Hook, and other stories

On board the Rampatina liner, eleven days and a half out from Liverpool, the usual terrific sensation created by the appearance of the pilot-yacht prevailed. Necks were craned a...

The Captain’s excellent teeth showed under his gray mustache. “That noise, you mean?” he exclaimed.... “Oh, that’s one of our electric air-pumps, for forcing air into the lower-...

“What an infatuation!” he groaned. In his mind’s eye he saw the County grinning over the childless widow and her adopted twins. As for Dosy and Brosy, they would have what in Am...

Hungry! _Diavolo!_ with what a raging hunger—an appetite of Gargantuan proportions, sharpened to the pitch of famine by the bubbling gushes of savory steam that jetted from unde...

“My dearest!” said Freddy, bending his blonde head over her jeweled hands. “My Cornelia! I will make you a hat every day when you are married. Ah! I have it! You shall wear one...

So a dainty monogrammed and coroneted note, on heliotrope paper, with a thin but decided bordering of black, was sent off to the Marquis of Valcourt, and Valcourt’s hostess in p...

Of theaters and theatrical people Gerry may be said to have known little or nothing until the enchanting Lottie blazed upon his field of vision. Gerry’s worthy parents, strict m...

“Amidst my distracted relative’s fragmentary utterances I gleaned the name of Rustleton. Hereditary weak heart—circulation as limited as that of a newspaper which on strictly mo...

“There is a proverb, ‘Once a golfer, always a golfer,’” put in Lady Millebrook. “I believe that to play the game successfully requires a vast amount of thought and judgment, whi...

“Momma wore her new face for six months with the greatest satisfaction,” said the Duchess. “Of course, she had to lay up for repairs pretty often, but the specialist was there t...

What price poor little me when I heard there wasn’t any House-Party? Cheap wasn’t the word, with all those costumes in my dress-baskets. However, I faked myself up in a frock th...

Hitherto, in her short but vivid experience of life, policemen had occupied a different plane, moved in another sphere. They were beings to dodge, defy, jeer at, and punch when...

“‘Dear Lady Smithgill,’ she said, or rather cooed (and those cooing voices are so irritating!), ‘depend on it, I shall make a point of keeping them in the most _perfect_ conditi...

“De Petoburgh saw great possibilities for me in it,” said Mrs. Gudrun, throwing another cigarette-end at the fireplace and missing it. “That scene where Kaja comes in dressed in...

Mrs. Gudrun permitted her classical features to soften. “Now you’re talking!” the lady said. She smiled through the bottom of her champagne-glass as Teddy, bowed in acknowledgme...

“She suffers,” said Mrs. Gudrun, neatly stopping the ball and playing it on her side. “You may bet she suffers. Hasn’t she got the artistic temperament? The amount of worry mine...

“After all, she is only a disembodied astral entity with whom I became acquainted—through my fifth principle, which is usually well developed—in the days when I moved in Spiritu...

“I knew something had happened,” said Gar’s mother, “when he came in to tea with me that very afternoon. ‘Mother, am I a villain?’ were his very words. ‘No, dear,’ I said, ‘do y...

“The young men you and grandmother point out to me as nice and eligible, and all that, are simply awful. They have no chins, or too much, and no teeth, or too many, and they don...

“But I should have liked him to have begun earlier,” I said. “Twenty-nine is a nice age, now.... It is the age we all try to stop at, and can’t, however much we try. Look there!”

“I shan’t disgrace you,” said Mr. Rubelius. “My kit and turn-out will be by the best makers, and I’ll tip the ’ead gillie fifty pound. I’m a soft-hearted hass to let the letters...

“For de highly-brivileged nopleman who hos dis day gonferred ubon de brightest oond lofliest ornamend of de London sdage a disdinguished name oond an ancient didle I hof noding...

“If I proposed to jot down the small events of my insignificant private life, dear fellers, or had the gift—supposing I did commit ’em to paper—of makin’ ’em interesting ...” sa...

“Rustleton said she was a New Girl of the worst type. Then came the diabolo affair, which, considering Céline’s remarkable knack, I cannot think accidental. The bridge of Rustle...