Paul Kelver

Of old Deleglise's Sunday suppers, which, costumed from head to foot in spotless linen, he cooked himself in his great kitchen, moving with flushed, earnest face about the gleam...

All things pass, even the self-inflicted sufferings of shy young men, condemned by temperament to solitude. Came the winter evenings, I took to work: in it one may drown much so...

Over our supper Dan and I exchanged histories. They revealed points of similarity. Leaving school some considerable time earlier than myself, Dan had gone to Cambridge; but two...

The sun was streaming into my window when I woke in the morning. I sat up and listened. The roar of the streets told me plainly that the day had begun without me. I reached out...

My father died, curiously enough, on the morning of his birthday. We had not expected the end to arrive for some time, and at first did not know that it had come.

During my time of struggle I had avoided all communication with old Hasluck. He was not a man to sympathise with feelings he did not understand. With boisterous good humour he w...

The eighteen months that followed--for the end came sooner than we had expected--were, I think, the happiest days my father and mother had ever known; or if happy be not altoget...

“Room to let for a single gentleman.” Sometimes in an idle hour, impelled by foolishness, I will knock at the door. It is opened after a longer or shorter interval by the “slave...

It took me three years to win that handshake. For the first six months I remained in Deptford. There was excellent material to be found there for humorous articles, essays, stor...

Fate intended me for a singularly fortunate man. Properly, I ought to have been born in June, which being, as is well known, the luckiest month in all the year for such events,...

Loves of my youth, whither are ye vanished? Tubby of the golden locks; Langley of the dented nose; Shamus stout of heart but faint of limb, easy enough to “down,” but utterly im...

Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from m...

Better is little, than treasure and trouble therewith. Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. None but a great man would have dared to u...

“Louisa!” roared my father down the kitchen stairs, “are you all asleep? Here have I had to answer the front door myself.” Then my father strode into his office, and the door sl...

I left London, the drums beating in my heart, the flags waving in my brain. Somewhat more than a year later, one foggy wet December evening, I sneaked back to it defeated--ah, t...

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. We were standing at the entrance of the narrow court leading to the stage door. For a fortnight past the O'Kelly had been coaching me. It h...

The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart mingle continuously with the rain of many f...

My mother, sitting down, began to cry. It had been a trying week for my mother. A party to dinner--to a real dinner, beginning with anchovies and ending with ices from the confe...

The case of my father and mother was not normal. You understand they had been separated for some years, and though they were not young in age--indeed, before my childish eyes th...

At the corner of a long, straight, brick-built street in the far East End of London--one of those lifeless streets, made of two drab walls upon which the level lines, formed by...

to a correct reply, with the immediate result of finding himself in an exposed position on the front bench. I had never seen Dan out of temper before, but that moment had any of...

“Correct” is, I think, the adjective by which I can best describe Doctor Florret and all his attributes. He was a large man, but not too large--just the size one would select fo...