Category: Humour
The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have borne me to various parts of Europe. I am a man, not with an establishment--but with two portmanteaus. I have two hats in Paris and two in L...
The story I have to tell is disjointed. I throw it out as I picked it up. My duties, the nature of which is neither here nor there, have borne me to various parts of Europe. I a...
2. Chapter 2Mrs. Rowe hastened from her room, behind the business parlour, in her dressing-gown, her teeth chattering, and her eyes flashing the fire of hate. The boarders sleeping upstairs...
3. Chapter 3I must be permitted to tell the rambling stories that ran parallel during my experiences of Mrs. Rowe's establishment in my own manner--filling up with what I guessed, all I hea...
4. Chapter 4The morning after a bevy of "the blonde daughters of Albion" have arrived in Paris, Pater--over the coffee (why is it impossible to get such coffee in England?), the delicious b...
5. Chapter 5The Cockaynes deserve a few words of formal introduction to the reader, since he is destined to make their better acquaintance. We have ventured hitherto only to take a few disc...
6. Chapter 6"Well, these Paris tradespeople are the most extraordinary persons in the world," cried Sophonisba's mamma, and the absolute ruler of Mr. Cockayne. "I confess I can't make them...
7. Chapter 7"DEAREST EMMY--They are all out shopping, so here's a long letter. I haven't patience with the men. I am sure we have had enough abuse in our own country, without travelling all...
8. Chapter 8"MY DEAREST EMMY,--I should certainly not venture to offer any remarks on taste to you, my love, under ordinary circumstances. But I am provoked. I have passed a severe round of...
9. Chapter 9"My dearest Emmy,--No answer from you? How unkind! But still I continue to give you my ideas of the moment from this. What do we want? A writer in one of the frivolous sheets wh...
10. Chapter 10Lucy Rowe would have been fast friends with Carrie Cockayne during their stay in her aunt's house, had Mrs. Cockayne, on the one hand, permitted her daughter to become intimate...
11. Chapter 11Poor girl! she was timid, frightened. I saw at once that the man with whom she was, and who packed her feet up so carefully in the travelling rug in her state cabin, was not of...
12. Chapter 12"You must come, my dear fellow. You know, when I promise you a pleasant evening I don't disappoint you. You'll meet everybody. You dine with me. _Sole Joinville_, at Philippe's-...
13. Chapter 13I had an unfortunate friend at Boulogne in the year 1865--then and many years before. He lived on the ramparts in the upper town; had put on that shabby military air, capped wit...
14. Chapter 14Cosmo Bertram was at a very low ebb. No horse. Had moved off to Batignolles. Had not been asked to the Embassy for a twelvemonth. When he ventured into the Tuileries gardens in...
15. Chapter 15It will happen so--and here is our moral--the bonnets of Sophonisba and Theodosia, bewitching as they were, and archly as these young ladies wore them, paling every toilette of...
16. Chapter 16Is there a more melancholy place than the street in which you have lived; than the house, now curtainless and weather-stained, you knew prim, and full of happy human creatures;...