When Thoughts Will Soar: A romance of the immediate future

A young girl stepped out of the gate of the Central Cemetery of Vienna. For almost eight weeks she had been going there to lay a few flowers on her father’s grave. That dearly b...

It was a pleasant surprise when your letter, after long wanderings, reached me here. I was convinced that you had entirely forgotten me,—ten long years we had lost sight of each...

Franka Garlett leaned back with closed eyes in one corner of the compartment. In another corner sat Dr. Fixstern, in whose company the young girl was making the trip to her new...

Five months had passed and a cold gray autumn had set in with pallid suns, soggy mists, wailing tempests. As melancholy as the weather was Franka’s mood. Sielenburg had not prov...

The gloomy autumnal sense of depression, which had settled down on Franka’s mind and the whole of Sielenburg, grew ever deeper. Death was making his entrance into the castle. Fo...

Chlodwig Helmer was writing the last act of his drama. He was well satisfied with his work. But he knew how wide and perhaps impossible was the gulf between the finishing of a t...

With the aid of Dr. Fixstern and his wife, Franka had established herself in the Vienna palace, having made first in the company of the doctor a trip to Lower Austria and Carint...

The next day Franka asked Dr. Fixstern what had become of the ring that her grandfather had left to Herr Helmer ... whether it had been as yet delivered. Dr. Fixstern replied th...

Franka read the letter over a second and a third time—then she let it sink into her lap and fell into deep thoughts. She was sitting alone in her sleeping-room; on the table bef...

The clock of Eternity has moved forward a few seconds; we are writing 191—. The twentieth century is still “in its teens,” but 1920 is not far away. The impatient, the impetuous...

Chlodwig Helmer had attained high literary rank during these years. His drama, produced in the Volkstheater at Vienna, won great applause, and was soon added to the repertory of...

By this time there had assembled a still larger crowd than before, visitors having come to join the house-party. Whoever had letters of introduction to either Mr. Toker or to on...

A small company of hotel guests who had been lunching together were sitting at their black coffee in a large special salon. It was the first day of the second Rose-Week, and the...

The red silk shades at the windows were drawn and a ruddy twilight permeated the room. All the salons in the suites put at the disposal of Mr. Toker’s guests had red hangings an...

The Marchese Rinotti, after having taken his leave of the Countess Vera and her cousin, went to his room to see whether during his absence anything had come to him by mail requi...

Elderly ladies of the Austrian aristocracy have no great inclination for traveling. While for a hundred years it has been the fashion in England to make a tour on the Continent,...

The exercises began at half-past seven in the evening; so at that time of the year it was still broad daylight. The public was admitted to the grounds flanked with pillared hall...

When Franka woke the following morning, she was possessed by the consciousness that all sorts of unpleasantnesses were weighing upon her.... What could it mean? Oh, yes, that ev...

The exercises on this second evening of the Rose-Week began as before with music. But it was a kind of music such as had never before, or anywhere else, been heard. A feeling of...

That night Helmer could not sleep. The experiences of the day had deeply agitated him. First, the morning call on Franka. The feeling of panic which she had so confidingly confe...

The programme of that evening began with an aviation festival over the lake. A surprise had been prepared: the first trial of a new method of flight. The invention had been work...

On the fourth day of the Rose-Week, the auditorium was as usual filled to the last seat. At the right, on the front of the platform, a kind of proscenium-box had been set up, de...

Franka drew a deep breath. She had listened with the deepest interest to every word spoken by Helmer, and now, when he had concluded, she turned around for the first time and be...

The next afternoon many scattered groups were sitting again in the hall of the Grand Hotel, and in the majority of them the conversation turned on Chlodwig Helmer’s address. Tra...

This evening the exercises were devoted to the concept Beauty. They were to begin with a concert; but not a concert of tones, rather of colors and lines—charm for the eye, intox...

In the mean time, John Toker and Helmer were chatting in the salon. The two men were sitting in the embrasure of one of the windows behind a screen of tall, big-leafed plants, a...

When Victor Adolph left Toker’s study, he felt still more oppressed than he had been before. A new task had been added to the many prospects and obligations that were so disturb...

The next to the last evening of this Rose-Week was at hand. The principal speaker was to be that young American, as yet unknown to the great majority, to whom Helmer had referre...

The next morning, Helmer had arranged to be at Franka’s at half-past eleven. After the American’s address, she had retired, and in bidding him goodnight, she had asked Helmer to...