The Romance of the Commonplace

Introduction April Essays Getting Acquainted Dining Out The Uncharted Sea The Art of Playing The Use of Fools Absolute Age The Manual Blessing The Deserted Island The Sense of H...

To such an innovator a dinner is given not for food but for pastime, and it is a game of which he may change the rules as soon and as often as they hamper his enjoyment. It matt...

Such praise of fools may seem extravagant or illogical, but if it is so, it must be not because the fool is not helpful and stimulating in society, but because, after all, he is...

But of one island I have not yet spoken. I can get no description of it save that it lies sleeping in the summer sun, washed by the sapphire tides and fanned by the cool south w...

But the collection of a multitude of things is no great oppression if one is permanently installed; they pad out the comforts of life, they create "atmosphere"; they fill up spa...

Slang, the illegitimate sister of Poetry, makes with her a common cause against the utilitarian economy of Prose. Both stand for lavish luxuriance in trope and involution, for f...

This is my bachelor reverie. But high noon approaches, and my metamorphosis is at hand. Now the sun has struck the fire-place with a lance of light, and I, that other I, must ri...

In every community, however small or remote, there are a few who delight in this comprehensive view of things, who keep up with the times, and, so far as their immediate neighbo...

Understand, I am not one of those who are always longing to be rich. I do very well, ordinarily, in the shadow of prosperity, though there comes upon me periodically the lust fo...

It is not only that "when I was single my pockets would jingle, I would I were single again"; it is not so much, either, that his play-day will be over and he must "settle down,...

So, at the expense of good taste and to the grief of the judicious, I force my point upon you. _En garde, messieurs_, and answer me! I find few enough who can play the game with...