The Adventures of a Modest Man

For I have a certain delicacy in admitting that my second visit abroad, after twenty years, was due to a pig. So now that the secret is out--the pig also--I'll begin properly.

The second day we ran out of the storm. I remember on that day that I wore a rather doggy suit of gray--a trifle too doggy for a man of my years. In my button-hole reposed a whi...

"DEAR JIM--Everything is spoiled, after all! Father's failing health has suddenly become a serious matter, and we are going to try the 'nature cure,' or whatever they call it, a...

"What was your first impression of Paris, Mr. Van Twiller?" inquired the young man from East Boston, as I was lighting my cigar in the corridor of the Hôtel des Michetons after...

As winter faded into spring the first tracery of green fringed the branches in Stuyvesant Square. The municipal authorities decorated the grass with tulips and later with gerani...

He came, holding two clay figures. The first was an exquisite winged shape, standing with delicate limbs parallel, arms extended, palms outward. The head was lifted a little, po...

"Exactly," said I, complacently. "Le grand monde means the great world; and," I added, "the world is a planet of no unusual magnitude, inhabited by bipeds whose entire existence...

The connection at Westport Junction was normally a close one, but now, even before the incoming train had entirely stopped, the local on the other line began to move out, while...

Turning to the man behind him Seabury attempted to extract a little information, and the man was very affable and anxious to be of help, but all he could do was to nod and utter...

She considered him with guileless eyes. He was _too_ good-looking, too attractive, too young, and far too much pleased with himself. That was the impression he gave her. And, as...

He had taken her in and was apparently climbing rapidly through the seven Heavens of rapture--having arrived as far as the third unchecked and without mishap. It is not probable...

"In my opinion," said I, "a man who comes to see Paris in three months is a fool, and kin to that celebrated ass who circum-perambulated the globe in eighty days. See all, see n...

Well, then, the way that Ellis and Jones met each other--and several other things--was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I believe--both were fishing, neither knew...

Up the narrow valley, over the unbroken sweep of treetops, arose tumbled peaks; and above the Golden Dome, pushing straight upward into the flawless blue of heaven, towered a cl...

"Ellis," said Jones, earnestly, as they climbed to the camp and stood gazing at the whitening ashes of their fire, "the simple life is a state of mind. I'm in it, now. And--do y...

Ellis hastily set his foot on the sparks, just as Molly Sandys jumped. There was a tearing, ripping sound, a stifled scream, and three-quarters of a page in blue satin and lisle...

Williams said, slowly: "A thing happened to that man which had no right to happen anywhere except in a musical comedy. But," he shrugged his shoulders, "everybody's lives are re...

The conversation dropped there: she gazed thoughtfully out upon the Teutonic magnificence of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street by gaslight; he, arms folded, relapsed into bitt...

She halted at the portal of an old-fashioned house which had been turned into an apartment hotel--a great brownstone mansion set back from the street. A severely respectable por...

My daughter Alida and my daughter Dulcima had gone to drive with the United States Ambassador and his daughter that morning, leaving me at the Hôtel with instructions as to my b...

"With the ghosts of years ago. But it seemed very realistic to me as I sat in the sun and recalled it. Possibly it was even real enough to sun-burn me a little."

Smith sauntered out to the terrace, looked at the sky, sniffed the roses, and sat down in the shadow of a cherry tree, cocking his feet up and resting his novel on his knees. Se...

Smith retired to his room to bathe, clothed himself in snowy linen and fresh tennis flannels, and descended again, book under his arm, to saunter forth through heavy tangles of...

There was a silence so politely indifferent on her part that he felt it to be the signal for his dismissal. And he took his leave with a formality so attractive, and a good humo...

After a long silence, in which I thought of many things, including the formal offers of Captains de Barsac and Torchon de Cluny, I said I had not heard of it, and added sarcasti...