The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him

The evening after this glorious day, Peter came in from his ride, but instead of going at once to his room, he passed down a little passage, and stood in a doorway.

If Peter had roamed about the hall that evening, he was still more restless the next morning. He was down early, though for no apparent reason, and did nothing but pass from hal...

Mr. Pierce was preparing to talk. Usually Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr. Pierce had been talking already, but it had been to single listeners only, and for quite a time in the last...

“See how joyful his future Excellency looks already,” said Watts, promptly recalling Peter to the serious part of life. And fortunately too, for from that moment, the time which...

After the rolls and coffee had been finished, Peter walked with his friends to their cab. It had all been arranged that they were to go to Peter’s quarters, and get some sleep....

Peter went into Ray’s office on Monday. “I want your advice,” he said. “I’m going to a birthday dinner to-morrow. A girl for whom I’m trustee. Now, how handsome a present may I...

As soon as Peter was on the express he went into the smoking cabin of the sleeping-car, and lighting a cigar, took out a letter and read it over again. While he was still readin...

But Peter’s social gadding did not end with these bread-and-butter calls. One afternoon in March, he went into the shop of a famous picture-dealer, to look over an exhibition th...

The evening on which Peter had left Grey-Court, Leonore had been moved “for sundry reasons” to go to her piano and sing an English ballad entitled “Happiness.” She had sung it s...

After Peter’s return from Washington, there was a settled gloom about him positively appalling. He could not be wooed, on any plea, by his closest friends, to journey up-town in...

When the season began again, Miss De Voe seriously undertook her self-imposed work of introducing Peter. He was twice invited to dinner and was twice taken with opera parties to...

The day after this episode, Peter had the very unusual experience of a note by his morning’s mail. Except for his mother’s weekly letter, it was the first he had received since...

It is not to be supposed from this last reflection of ours, that Leonore was not heart-whole. Leonore had merely had a few true friends, owing to her roving life, and at sevente...

Peter sat up later than was prudent that night, studying his blank wall. Yet when he rose to go to bed, he gave his head a puzzled shake. When he had gone through his papers, an...

When the ride was ended, Leonore was sent home in the carriage, Watts saying he would go with Peter to his club. As soon as they were in the cab, he said:

The dramatic pause which followed Peter’s statement was first broken by Mrs. D’Alloi, who threw her arms about Watt’s neck, and cried: “Oh! my husband. Forgive me, forgive me fo...

After this statement, so satisfying to both, Leonore recovered her dignity enough to rise, and say, “Now, I want to pay you for your niceness. What do you wish to do?”

Peter had as glorious an afternoon as he had had a bad morning. First he danced a little. Then the two sat at the big desk in the deserted library and worked together over those...

At first blush, judging from Peter’s behavior, the girl was not going to bother him. Peter left his horse at the stable, and taking a hansom, went to his club. There he spent a...

Though Peter had not gone to bed so early as he hoped, he was up the next morning, and had tramped his eight miles through and around Saratoga, before the place gave many eviden...

Of the further doings of that day it seems hardly necessary to write, for the papers recorded it with a fulness impossible here. The gathering crowds. The reinforcement of the m...

Peter had not been working long the next morning when he was told that “The Honorable Terence Denton wishes to see you,” “Very well,” he said, and that worthy was ushered in.

Peter dressed himself the next evening with particular care, even for him. As Peter dressed, he was rather down on life. He had been kept from his ride that afternoon by taking...

Peter declared the meeting adjourned as soon as the results of the election had been read, and slipped away in the turmoil that immediately followed, without a word to any one....

When Peter returned from his ride the next day, he found Leonore reading the papers in the big hall. She gave him a very frigid “good-morning,” yet instantly relaxed a little in...

“What a funny old chap he is?” Ray remarked to Ogden, as they went back to work. “He brought me his opinion, just after lunch, in the Hall-Seelye case. I suppose he had been gru...

Mr. Pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in a sense an odd number in the “Sunrise’s” compl...

The only reply which Peter received to his letter to the District-Attorney, was a mere formal reiteration of that officer’s verbal statement, that the case would be taken up in...

Leonore’s puzzle went on increasing in complexity, but there is a limit to all intricacy, and after a time Leonore began to get an inkling of the secret. She first noticed that...

The last remark made by Miss De Voe to her fire resulted, after a few days, in Peter’s receiving a formal dinner invitation, which he accepted with a promptness not to be surpas...

Peter had his ride the next morning, and had a very interested listener to his account of that dinner. The listener, speaking from vast political knowledge, told him at the end....

Peter made his dinner call at Miss De Voe’s, but did not find her at home. He received a very pleasant letter expressing her regret at missing him, and a request to lunch with h...

“At least we know that he said he was trying to tell the truth,” she went on, “and you just heard what that man said. I don’t know why they all laughed.”

But a month later he was far happier, for one morning towards the end of August, his mail brought him a letter from Watts, announcing that they had been four days installed in t...

Peter had only a month for work after reaching his own conclusions, before the meeting of the convention, but in that month he worked hard. As the result, a rumor, carrying dism...

Nor was it the district alone which talked of the speech. Perhaps the residents of it made their feelings most manifest, for they organized a torchlight procession that night, a...

Something in Peter’s face seemed to reassure the girl, for though she looked down after the glance, she ceased leaning against the horse, and said, “I behaved very foolishly, of...

In spite of nine months’ hard work on the two Commissions, it is not to be supposed that Peter’s time was thus entirely monopolized. If one spends but seven hours of the twenty-...

Peter had seen his clients on the morning following the settlement of the cases, and told them of their good fortune. They each had a look at Bohlmann’s check, and then were ask...

After this rush of work, Peter’s life became as routine as of yore. The winter passed without an event worth noting, if we except a steadily growing acquaintance with the dwelle...

The unconscious illustration of Mr. Pierce’s theory was pacing backwards and forwards on the narrow space between the cuddy-roof and the gunwale, which custom dignifies with the...

The moment she was gone, Watts held out his hand, saying: “Here, old man, let us shake hands again. It’s almost like going back to college days to see my old chum. Come to the s...

The window of Peter’s office faced east, and the rays of the morning sun shining dazzlingly in his eyes forced him back to a consciousness of things mundane. He rose, and went d...

And how well had that “talk-it-over” group at the end of Peters wedding-day grasped his character? How clearly do we ever gain an insight into the feelings and motives which ind...

The sight of the party on the veranda of the Shrubberies brought a return of self-consciousness to Peter, and he braced himself, as the trap slowed up, for the agony of formal g...

But just as Peter was about to continue this rather unsatisfactory train of thought, his eye caught sight of a flattened bullet lying on the floor. He picked it up, with a smile...

“If you could only understand it, mother, as I have come to, you wouldn’t mind. Here, the saloon is chiefly a loafing place for the lazy and shiftless, but in New York, it’s ver...

The next day it was raining torrents, but despite this, and to the utter neglect of his law business, Peter drove up-town immediately after lunch, to the house in Fifty-seventh...

The middle of July found Peter in New York, eager to begin his grapple with the future. How many such stormers have dashed themselves against its high ramparts, from which float...

It was at the end of this day’s yachting that Peter was having his “unsocial walk.” Early on the morrow he would be taking the train for his native town, and the thought of this...

Mr. Pierce was talking. Mr. Pierce was generally talking. From the day that his proud mamma had given him a sweetmeat for a very inarticulate “goo” which she translated into “pa...

How far Watts was confining himself to facts in the foregoing dialogue is of no concern, for the only point of value was that Peter was invited, without regard to whether Watts...

If the American people had anglicized themselves as thoroughly into liking three-volume stories, as they have in other things, it would be a pleasure to trace the next ten years...

“You see I go back to the city occasionally in the summer, so as to make the country bearable, and then I go back to the country, so as to make the city endurable. I shall be in...

Peter had had some rough experiences two or three times in his fall campaign, and Dennis, who had insisted on escorting him, took him to task about his “physical culture.”

Peter went to work the next morning at an hour which most of us, if we are indiscreet enough to wake, prefer to use as the preface to a further two to four hours’ nap. He had sp...

Peter sat in his office, one hot July day, two years after his arrival, writing to his mother. He had but just returned to New York, after a visit to her, which had left him rat...

Mr. Converse had evidently thought that the only way for Peter to get on was to make friends. But in this first year Peter did not made a single one that could be really called...

“My friend,” said an old and experienced philosopher to a young man, who with all the fire and impatience of his years wished to conquer the world quickly, “youth has many thing...

Peter saw the District Attorney the next morning for a few moments, and handed over to him certain memoranda of details that had not appeared in the committing court’s record.

Army surgeons recognize three types of wounded. One type so nervous, that it drops the moment it is struck, whether the wound is disabling or not. Another so nerveless, that it...