The Potiphar Papers

However, to return to the party, I believe nothing else was injured except the curtains in the front drawing-room, which were so smeared with ice-cream and oyster gravy, that we...

“When the gong sounds,” says he, “I am reminded of the martial music of Sennaar. When I seat myself in the midst of such splendor of toilette, and in an apartment so stately and...

“You are sufficiently cool, at least, I think,” replied I. -- “Naturally,” said he, “for I’ve been in the immediate vicinity of the boreal pole for half an hour--a neighborhood...

Well, I don’t know how it is--but things are so queer. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, in my room, which I have had tapestried with fluted rose silk, and lie thinking,...

The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is “Vanity Fair.” Is the spirit of that story less true of New York than of London? Probably we never see Ameli...

“I’m sure--I didn’t know--I didn’t--I wouldn’t--Mrs. Gnu knows;” said he, in the greatest embarrassment. “I beg your pardon sincerely, madame.” And he looked so humble and repen...

So we agreed to go to the opera. We passed the days shopping, and driving in the _Bois de Boulogne_. Sometimes the young men went with us, and D’Orsay Firkin confided to me one...

It is whimsical, because this absurd spectacle is presented by manikins who are made of the same clay as Plutarch’s heroes-because, deliberately, they prefer cabbages to roses....

These elegant Pendennises we saw at Mrs. Potiphar’s, but not without a sadness which can hardly be explained. They had been boys once, all of them, fresh and frank-hearted, and...

“Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breath...

I am sure the Emgress Eugenie would have been jealous, could she have heard the tone in which it was said. Wasn’t it affable in such a great monarch towards a mere republican? I...