id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1
value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000000048100 | how in the back of my head I've had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was done, but, like I say, talk is cheap and moving ain't so easy done--ain't it? If he puts in new plumbing in the pantry and new hinges on the doors and papers my second floor and Mrs. Suss's alcove, like | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048101 | I said last night, after all I could do worse as stay here another five year--ain't it, Mr. Vetsburg?" "I--" "A house what keeps filled so easy, and such a location, with the Subway less as two blocks. I--So you see, Mr. Vetsburg, if I don't want I come back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048102 | my head, I got to stay home for Shulif when he comes to-day." A rush of dark blood had surged up into Mr. Vetsburg's face, and he twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim. "Mrs. Kaufman," he cried--"Mrs. Kaufman, sometimes when for years a man don't speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048103 | sudden right out. I--Oh--e-e-e!" and, immediately and thickly inarticulate, made a tremendous feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught it; rolled his eyes. "Mr. Vetsburg?" "A man, Mrs. Kaufman, can bust!" "Bust?" He was still violently dark, but swallowing with less labor. "Yes, from holding in. Mrs. Kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048104 | the world, and I can prove it--a woman, Mrs. Kaufman, who in her heart and my heart and--Should such a woman not come to Atlantic City when I got everything fixed like a stage set!" She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. "Mr. Vetsburg, for God's sake, 'ain't I just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--." "Will you, Mrs. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048105 | Kaufman, come or won't you? Will you, I ask you, or won't you?" "I--I can't, Mr.--" "All right, then, I--I bust out now. To-day can be as good as to-morrow! Not with my say in a t'ousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease! I ain't a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048106 | t'ousand years you sign that lease." "Mr. Vetsburg, Ruby--I--" "If anybody's got a lease on you, Mrs. Kaufman, I--I want it! I want it! That's the kind of a lease would suit me. To be leased to you for always, the rest of your life!" She could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood interrogating him with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048107 | her heartbeats at her throat. "Mr. Vetsburg, if he puts on the doors and hinges and new plumbing in--." "I'm a plain man, Mrs. Kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can give out her heart's blood like it was so much water. But all these years I been waiting, Mrs. Kaufman, to bust out, until--till things got riper. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048108 | I know with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last, that first your girl must be fixed--." "She's a young girl, Mr. Vetsburg. You--you mustn't depend--. If I had my say--." "He's a fine fellow, Mrs. Kaufman. With his uncle to help 'em, they got, let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!" She | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048109 | rose, holding on to the desk. "I--I--" she said. "What?" "Lena," he uttered, very softly. "Lena, Mr. Vetsburg?" "It 'ain't been easy, Lenie, these years while she was only growing up, to keep off my lips that name. A name just like a leaf off a rose. Lena!" he reiterated and advanced. Comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048110 | "I--I--. Mr. Vetsburg, you must excuse me," she said, and sat down suddenly. He crossed to the little desk and bent low over her chair, his hand not on her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair. His voice had a swift rehearsed quality. "Maybe to-morrow, if you didn't back out, it would sound finer by the ocean, Lenie, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048111 | but it don't need the ocean a man should tell a woman when she's the first and the finest woman in the world. Does it, Lenie?" "I--I thought Ruby. She--" "He's a good boy, Leo is, Lenie. A good boy what can be good to a woman like his father before him. Good enough even for a fine girl like | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048112 | our Ruby, Lenie--_our_ Ruby!" "_Gott im Himmel_! then you--" "Wide awake, too. With a start like I can give him in my business, you 'ain't got to worry Ruby 'ain't fixed herself with the man what she chooses. To-morrow at Atlantic City all fixed I had it I should tell--" "You!" she said, turning around in her chair to face | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048113 | him. "You--all along you been fixing--" He turned sheepish. "Ain't it fair, Lenie, in love and war and business a man has got to scheme for what he wants out of life? Long enough it took she should grow up. I knew all along once those two, each so full of life and being young, got together it was natural | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048114 | what should happen. Mrs. Kaufman! Lenie! Lenie!" Prom two flights up, in through the open door and well above the harsh sound of scrubbing, a voice curled down through the hallways and in. "Mrs. Kaufman, ice-water--ple-ase!" "Lenie," he said, his singing, tingling fingers closing over her wrist. "Mrs. Kauf-man, ice-water, pl--" With her free arm she reached and slammed the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048115 | door, let her cheek lie to the back of his hand, and closed her eyes. IV HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY In the third winter of a world-madness, with Europe guzzling blood and wild with the taste of it, America grew flatulent, stenching winds from the battle-field blowing her prosperity. Granaries filled to bursting tripled in value, and, in congested | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048116 | districts, men with lean faces rioted when bread advanced a cent a loaf. Munition factories, the fires of destruction smelting all night, worked three shifts. Millions of shells for millions of dollars. Millions of lives for millions of shells. A country feeding into the insatiable maw of war with one hand, and with the other pouring relief-funds into coffers bombarded | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048117 | by guns of its own manufacture--quelling the wound with a finger and widening it with a knife up the cuff. In France, women with blue faces and too often with the pulling lips of babes at dry breasts, learned the bitter tasks of sewing closed the coat sleeves and of cutting off and hemming the trousers leg at the knee. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048118 | In America, women new to the feel of fur learned to love it and not question whence it came. Men of small affairs, suddenly earthquaked to the crest of the great tidal wave of new market-values, went drunk with wealth. In New York, where so many great forces of a great country coagulate, the face of the city photographed would | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048119 | have been a composite of fat and jowl, rouge and heavy lip--satiated yet insatiate, the head double-chinned and even a little loggy with too many satisfactions. But that is the New York of the Saturnite and of Teufelsdrckh alone with his stars. Upon Mrs. Blutch Connors, gazing out upon the tide of West Forty-seventh Street, life lay lightly and as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048120 | unrelated as if ravage and carnage and the smell of still warm blood were of another planet. A shower of white light from an incandescent tooth-brush sign opposite threw a pallid reflection upon Mrs. Connors; it spun the fuzz of frizz rising off her blond coiffure into a sort of golden fog and picked out the sequins of her bodice. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048121 | The dinner-hour descends glitteringly upon West Forty-seventh Street, its solid rows of long, lanky hotels, actors' clubs, and sixty-cent _tables d'hte_ adding each its candle-power. From her brace of windows in the Hotel Metropolis, the street was not unlike a gully cut through mica, a honking tributary flowing into the great sea of Broadway. A low, high-power car, shaped like | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048122 | an ellipse, cut through the snarl of traffic, bleating. A woman, wrapped in a greatcoat of "baby" pelts and an almost undistinguishable dog in the cove of her arm, walked out from the Hotel Metropolis across the sidewalk and into a taxicab. An army of derby hats, lowered slightly into the wind, moved through the white kind of darkness. Standing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048123 | there, buffeting her pink nails across her pink palms, Mrs. Connors followed the westward trend of that army. Out from it, a face lying suddenly back flashed up at her, a mere petal riding a swift current. But at sight of it Mrs. Blutch Connors inclined her entire body, pressing a smile and a hand against the cold pane, then | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048124 | turned inward, flashing on an electrolier--a bronze Nydia holding out a cluster of frosted bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale memories. The hotel suite has | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048125 | become the brocaded tomb of the old-fashioned garden. The kitchen has shrunk into the chafing-dish, and all the dear old concoctions that mother used to try to make now come tinned, condensed, and predigested in sixty-seven varieties. Even the vine-covered threshold survives only in the booklets of promoters of suburban real estate. In New York, the home-coming spouse arrives on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048126 | the vertical, shunted out at whatever his layer. Yet, when Mrs. Connors opened the door of her pink-brocaded sitting-room, her spirit rose with the soughing rise of the elevator, and Romance--hardy fellow--showed himself within a murky hotel corridor. "Honeybunch!" "Babe!" said Mr. Blutch Connors, upon the slam of the lift door. And there, in the dim-lit halls, with its rows | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048127 | of closed doors in blank-faced witness thereof, they embraced, these two, despising, as Flaubert despised, to live in the reality of things. "My boy's beau-ful cheeks all cold!" "My girl's beau-ful cheeks all warm and full of some danged good cologne," said Mr. Connors, closing the door of their rooms upon them, pressing her head back against the support of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048128 | his arm, and kissing her throat as the chin flew up. He pressed a button, and the room sprang into more light, coming out pinkly and vividly--the brocaded walls pliant to touch with every so often a gilt-framed engraving; a gilt table with an onyx top cheerfully cluttered with the sauciest short-story magazines of the month; a white mantelpiece with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048129 | an artificial hearth and a pink-and-gilt _chaise-longue_ piled high with small, lacy pillows, and a very green magazine open and face downward on the floor beside it. "Comin' better, honeybunch?" "I dunno, Babe. The town's mad with money, but I don't feel myself going crazy with any of it." "What ud you bring us, honey?" He slid out of his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048130 | silk-lined greatcoat, placing his brown derby atop. "Three guesses, Babe," he said, rubbing his cold hands in a dry wash, and smiling from five feet eleven of sartorial accomplishment down upon her. "Honey darlin'!" said Mrs. Connors, standing erect and placing her cheek against the third button of his waistcoat. "Wow! how I love the woman!" he cried, closing his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048131 | hands softly about her throat and tilting her head backward again. "Darlin', you hurt!" "Br-r-r--can't help it!" When Mr. Connors moved, he gave off the scent of pomade freely; his slightly thinning brown hair and the pointy tips to a reddish mustache lay sleek with it. There was the merest suggestion of _embonpoint_ to the waistcoat, but not so that, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048132 | when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his russet shoes were not in evidence. His pin-checked suit was pressed to a knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air of complete well-being about him. Men can acquire that sort of eupeptic well-being in a Turkish bath. Young mothers and life-jobbers have it naturally. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048133 | Suddenly, Mrs. Connors began to foray into his pockets, plunging her hand into the right, the left, then stopped suddenly, her little face flashing up at him. "It's round and furry--my honeybunch brought me a peach! Beau-ful pink peach in December! Nine million dollars my hubby pays to bring him wifey a beau-ful pink peach." She drew it out--a slightly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048134 | runty one with a forced blush--and bit small white teeth immediately into it. "M-m-m!"--sitting on the _chaise-longue_ and sucking inward. He sat down beside her, a shade graver. "Is my babe disappointed I didn't dig her coat and earrings out of hock?" She lay against him. "I should worry!" "There just ain't no squeal in my girl." "Wanna bite?" "Any | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048135 | one of 'em but you would be hollering for their junk out of pawn. But, Lord, the way she rigs herself up without it! Where'd you dig up the spangles, Babe? Gad! I gotta take you out to-night and buy you the right kind of a dinner. When I walks my girl into a caf, they sit up and take | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048136 | notice, all righty. Spangles she rigs herself up in when another girl, with the way my luck's been runnin', would be down to her shimmy-tail." She stroked his sleeve as if it had the quality of fur. "Is the rabbit's foot still kicking my boy?" "Never seen the like, honey. The cards just won't come. This afternoon I even played | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048137 | the wheel over at Chuck's, and she spun me dirt." "It's gotta turn, Blutch." "Sure!" "Remember the run of rotten luck you had that year in Cincinnati, when the ponies was runnin' at Latonia?" "Yeh." "Lost your shirt, hon, and the first day back in New York laid a hundred on the wheel and won me my seal coat. You--we--We | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048138 | couldn't be no lower than that time we got back from Latonia, hon?" He laid his hand over hers. "Come on, Babe. Joe'll be here directly, and then we're going and blow them spangles to a supper." "Blutch, answer!" "Now there's nothin' to worry about, Babe. Have I ever landed anywhere but on my feet? We'll be driving a racer | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048139 | down Broadway again before the winter's over. There's money in motion these wartimes, Babe. They can't keep my hands off it." "Blutch, how--how much did you drop to-day? "I could tell clear down on the street you lost, honey, the way you walked so round-shouldered." "What's the difference, honey? Come; just to show you I'm a sport, I'm going to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048140 | shoot you and Joe over to Jack's in one of them new white taxi-cabs." "Blutch, how much?" "Well, if you gotta know it, they laid me out to-day, Babe. Dropped that nine hundred hock-money like it was a hot potato, and me countin' on bringin' you home your coat and junk again to-night. Gad! Them cards wouldn't come to me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048141 | with salt on their tails." "Nine hundred! Blutch, that--that leaves us bleached!" "I know it, hon. Just never saw the like. Wouldn't care if it wasn't my girl's junk and fur coat. That's what hurts a fellow. If there's one thing he ought to look to, it's to keep his wimmin out of the game." "It--it ain't that, Blutch; but--but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048142 | where's it comin' from?" He struck his thigh a resounding whack. "With seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine. Why, before I had my babe for my own, many's the time I was down to shoe-shine money. Up to 'leven years ago it wasn't nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a pool-table one night and _de | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048143 | luxe_ the next. If life was a sure thing for me, I'd ask 'em to put me out of my misery. It's only since I got my girl that I ain't the plunger I used to be. Big Blutch has got his name from the old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048144 | size." She sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the fuzzy aura. "Blutch, we--we just never was down to the last seventy-five before. That time at Latonia, it was a hundred and more." "Why, girl, once, at Hot Springs, I had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048145 | to hock my coat and vest, and I got started on a run of new luck playin' in my shirt-sleeves, pretending I was a summer boy." "That was the time you gave Lenny Gratz back his losings and got him back to his wife." "Right-o! Seen him only to-night. He's traveling out of Cleveland for an electric house and has | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048146 | forgot how aces up looks. That boy had as much chance in the game as a deacon." Mrs. Connors laid hold of Mr. Connors's immaculate coat lapel, drawing him toward her. "Oh, Blutch--honey--if only--if only--" "If only what, Babe?" "If you--you--" "Why, honey, what's eatin' you? I been down pretty near this low many a time; only, you 'ain't known | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048147 | nothing about it, me not wanting to worry your pretty head. You ain't afraid, Babe, your old hubby can't always take care of his girl A1, are you?" "No, no, Blutch; only--" "What, Babe?" "I wish to God you was out of it, Blutch! I wish to God!" "Out of what, Babe?" "The game, Blutch. You're too good, honey, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048148 | too--too honest to be in it. What show you got in the end against your playin' pals like Joe Kirby and Al Flexnor? I know that gang, Blutch. I've tried to tell you so often how, when I was a kid livin' at home, that crowd used to come to my mother's--" "Now, now, girl; business is--" "You're too good, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048149 | Blutch, and too honest to be in it. The game'll break you in the end. It always does. Blutch darling, I wish to God you was out of it!" "Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, I never knew you felt this way about it." "I do, Blutch, I do! For years, it's been here in me--here, under my heart--eatin' me, Blutch, eatin' me!" | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048150 | And she placed her hands flat to her breast. "Why, Babe!" "I never let on. You--I--You been too good, Blutch, to a girl like--like I was for me to let out a whimper about anything. A man that took a girl like--like me that had knocked around just like--my mother and even--even my grandmother before me had knocked around--took and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048151 | married me, no questions asked. A girl like me 'ain't got the right to complain to no man, much less to one like you. The heaven you've given me for eleven years, Blutch! The heaven! Sometimes, darlin', just sittin' here in a room like this, with no--no reason for bein' here--it's just like I--" "Babe, Babe, you mustn't!" "Sittin' here, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048152 | waiting for you to come and not carin' for nothing or nobody except that my boy's comin' home to me--it's like I was in a dream, Blutch, and like I was going to wake up and find myself back in my mother's house, and--" "Babe, you been sittin' at home alone too much. I always tell you, honey, you ought | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048153 | to make friends. Chuck De Roy's wife wants the worst way to get acquainted with you--a nice, quiet girl. It ain't right, Babe, for you not to have no friends at all to go to the matine with or go buyin' knickknacks with. You're gettin' morbid, honey." She worked herself out of his embrace, withholding him with her palms pressed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048154 | out against his chest. "I 'ain't got nothing in life but you, honey. There ain't nobody else under the sun makes any difference. That's why I want you to get out of it, Blutch. It's a dirty game--the gambling game. You ain't fit for it. You're too good. They've nearly got you now, Blutch. Let's get out, honey, while the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048155 | goin's good. Let's take them seventy-five bucks and buy us a peanut-stand or a line of goods. Let's be regular folks, darlin'! I'm willin' to begin low down. Don't stake them last seventy-five, Blutch. Break while we're broke. It ain't human nature to break while your luck's with you." He was for folding her in his arms, but she still | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048156 | withheld him. "Blutch darlin', it's the first thing I ever asked of you." He grew grave, looking long into her blue eyes with the tears forming over them. "Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, danged if I know what to say! You sure you're feelin' well, Babe? 'Ain't took cold, have you, with your fur coat in hock?" "No, no, no!" "Well, I--I | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048157 | guess, honey, if the truth was told, your old man ain't cut out for nothing much besides the gamin'-table--a fellow that's knocked around the world the way I have." "You are, Blutch; you are! You're an expert accountant. Didn't you run the Two Dollar Hat Store that time in Syracuse and get away with it?" "I know, Babe; but when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048158 | a fellow's once used to makin' it easy and spendin' it easy, he can't be satisfied lopin' along in a little business. Why, just take to-night, honey! I only brought home my girl a peach this evening, but that ain't sayin' that before morning breaks I can't be bringin' her a couple of two-carat stones." "No, no, Blutch; I don't | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048159 | want 'em. I swear to God I don't want 'em!" "Why, Babe, I just can't figure out what's got into you. I never heard you break out like this. Are you scared, honey, because we happen to be lower than--" "No, no, darlin'; I ain't scared because we're low. I'm scared to get high again. It's the first run of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048160 | real luck you've had in three years, Blutch. There was no hope of gettin' you out while things was breakin' good for you; but now--" "I ain't sayin' it's the best game in the world. I'd see a son of mine laid out before I'd let him get into it. But it's what I'm cut out for, and what are | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048161 | you goin' to do about it? 'Ain't you got everything your little heart desires? Ain't we going down to Sheepshead when the first thaw sets in? Ain't we just a pair of love-birds that's as happy as if we had our right senses? Come, Babe; get into your jacket. Joe'll be here any minute, and I got that porterhouse at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048162 | Jack's on the brain. Come kiss your hubby." She held up her face with the tears rolling down it, and he kissed a dry spot and her yellow frizzed bangs. "My girl! My cry-baby girl!" "You're all I got in the world, Blutch! Thinkin' of what's best for you has eat into me." "I know! I know!" "We'll never get | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048163 | nowheres in this game, hon. We ain't even sure enough of ourselves to have a home like--like regular folks." "Never you mind, Babe. Startin' first of the year, I'm going to begin to look to a little nest-egg." "We ought to have it, Blutch. Just think of lettin' ourselves get down to the last seventy-five! What if a rainy day | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048164 | should come--where would we be at? If you--or me should get sick or something." "You ain't all wrong, girl." "You'd give the shirt off your back, Blutch; that's why we can't ever have a nest-egg as long as you're playin' stakes. There's too many hard-luck stories lying around loose in the gamblin' game." "The next big haul I make I'm | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048165 | going to get out, girl, so help me!" "Blutch!" "I mean it. We'll buy a chicken-farm." "Why not a little business, Blutch, in a small town with--" "There's a great future in chicken-farmin'. I set Boy Higgins up with a five-hundred spot the year his lung went back on him, and he paid me back the second year." "Blutch darlin', | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048166 | you mean it?" "Why not, Babe--seein' you want it? There ain't no string tied to me and the green-felt table. I can go through with anything I make up my mind to." "Oh, honey baby, you promise! Darling little fuzzy chickens!" "Why, girl, I wouldn't have you eatin' yourself thisaway. The first ten-thou' high-water mark we hit I'm quits. How's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048167 | that?" "Ten thousand! Oh, Blutch, we--" "What's ten thou', girl! I made the Hot Springs haul with a twenty-dollar start. If you ain't careful, we'll be buyin' that chicken-farm next week. That's what can happen to my girl if she starts something with her hubby." Suddenly Mrs. Connors crumpled in a heap upon the lacy pillows, pink sequins heaving. "Why, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048168 | Babe--Babe, what is it? You're sick or something to-night, honey." He lifted her to his arms, bent almost double over her. "Nothin', Blutch, only--only I just never was so happy." "Lord!" said Blutch Connors. "All these years, and I never knew anything was eatin' her." "I--I never was, Blutch." "Was what?" "So--happy." "Lord bless my soul! The poor little thing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048169 | was afraid to say it was a chicken-farm she wanted!" He patted her constantly, his eyes somewhat glazy. "Us two, Blutch, livin' regular." "You ain't all wrong, girl." "You home evenings, Blutch, regular like." "You poor little thing!" "You'll play safe, Blutch? Play safe to win!" "I wish I'd have went into the farmin' three years ago, Babe, the week | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048170 | I hauled down eleven thou'." "You was too fed up with luck then, Blutch. I knew better 'n to ask." "Lord bless my soul! and the poor little thing was afraid to say it was a chicken-farm she wanted!" "Promise me, Blutch, you'll play 'em close--to win!" "Al's openin' up his new rooms to-night. Me and Joe are goin' to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048171 | play 'em fifty-fifty. It looks to me like a haul, Babe." "He's crooked, Blutch, I tell you." "No more 'n all of 'em are, Babe. Your eyes open and your pockets closed is my motto. What you got special against Joe? You mustn't dig up on a fellow, Babe." "I--. Why ain't he livin' in White Plains, where his wife | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048172 | and kids are?" "What I don't know about the private life of my card friends don't hurt me." "It's town talk the way he keeps them rooms over at the Liberty. 'Way back when I was a kid, Blutch, I remember how he used to--" "I know there ain't no medals on Joe, Babe, but if you don't stop listenin' | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048173 | to town talk, you're going to get them pretty little ears of yours all sooty." "I know, Blutch; but I could tell you things about him back in the days when my mother--" "Me and him are goin' over to Al's to-night and try to win my babe the first chicken for her farm. Whatta you bet? Us two ain't | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048174 | much on the sociability end, but we've played many a lucky card fifty-fifty. Saturday is our mascot night, too. Come, Babe; get on your jacket, and--" "Honeybunch, you and Joe go. I ain't hungry." "But--" "I'll have 'em send me up a bite from the grill." "You ain't sore because I asked Joe? It's business, Babe." "Of course I ain't, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048175 | honey; only, with you and him goin' right over to Al's afterward, what's the sense of me goin'? I wanna stay home and think. It's just like beginnin' to-night I could sit here and look right into the time when there ain't goin' to be no more waitin' up nights for my boy. I--They got all little white chickens out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048176 | at Denny's roadhouse, Blutch--white with red combs. Can we have some like them?" "You betcher life we can! I'm going to win the beginnings of that farm before I'm a night older. Lordy! Lordy! and to think I never knew anything was eatin' her!" "Blutch, I--I don't know what to say. I keep cryin' when I wanna laugh. I never | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048177 | was so happy, Blutch, I never was." "My little kitty-puss!" * * * * * At seven o'clock came Mr. Joe Kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. "Come right in, Joe! I'm here and waitin' for you." "Ain't the missis in on this killin'?" "She--Not this--" "No, Joe; not--to-night." "Sorry to hear it," said Mr. Kirby, flecking an inch | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048178 | of cigar-ash to the table-top. "Fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is wearing to-night." "The wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" "Blutch!" "You know my sentiments about her. They don't come no ace-higher." She colored, even quivered, standing there beside the bronze Nydia. "I tell her we're out for big business to-night, Joe." "Sky's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048179 | the limit. Picked up a pin pointin' toward me and sat with my back to a red-headed woman. Can't lose." "Well, good-night, Babe. Take care o' yourself." "Good night, Blutch. You'll play 'em close, honey?" "You just know I will, Babe." An hour she sat there, alone on the _chaise-longue_, staring into space and smiling at what she saw there. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048180 | Finally she dropped back into the lacy mound of pillows, almost instantly asleep, but still smiling. * * * * * At four o'clock, that hour before dawn cracks, even the West Forties, where night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry, drop into long narrow aisles of gloom. Thin, high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede into the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048181 | mouse-colored mist of morning, and, as through quagmire, this mist hovering close to ground, figures skulk--that nameless, shapeless race of many bloods and one complexion, the underground complexion of paste long sour from standing. At somewhat after that hour Mr. Blutch Connors made exit from one of these houses, noiseless, with scarcely a click after him, and then, without pause, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048182 | passed down the brownstone steps and eastward. A taxicab slid by, its honk as sorrowful as the cry of a plover in a bog. Another--this one drawing up alongside, in quest of fare. He moved on, his breath clouding the early air, and his hands plunged deep in his pockets as if to plumb their depth. There was a great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048183 | sag to the silhouette of him moving thus through the gloom, the chest in and the shoulders rounding and lessening their front span. Once he paused to remove the brown derby and wipe at his brow. A policeman struck his stick. He moved on. An all-night drug-store, the modern sort of emporium where the capsule and the herb have become | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048184 | side line to the ivoritus toilet-set and the pocket-dictionary, threw a white veil of light across the sidewalk. Well past that window, but as if its image had only just caught up with him, Mr. Connors turned back, retracing ten steps. A display-window, denuded of frippery but strewn with straw and crisscrossed with two large strips of poster, proclaimed Chicklet | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048185 | Face Powder to the cosmetically concerned. With an eye to fidelity, a small brood of small chickens, half dead with bad air and not larger than fists, huddled rearward and out of the grilling light--puny victims to an indorsed method of correspondence-school advertising. Mr. Connors entered, scouting out a dozy clerk. "Say, bo, what's one of them chicks worth?" "Ain't | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048186 | fer sale." Mr. Connors lowered his voice, nudging. "I gotta sick wife, bo. Couldn't you slip me one in a 'mergency?" "What's the idea--chicken broth? You better go in the park and catch her a chippie." "On the level, friend, one of them little yellow things would cheer her up. She's great one for pets." "Can't you see they're half-dead | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048187 | now? What you wanna cheer her up with--a corpse? If I had my way, I'd wring the whole display's neck, anyhow." "What'll you take for one, bo?" "It'll freeze to death." "Look! This side pocket is lined with velvet." "Dollar." "Aw, I said one, friend, not the whole brood." "Leave or take." Mr. Connors dug deep. "Make it sixty cents | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048188 | and a poker-chip, bo. It's every cent I got in my pocket." "Keep the poker-chip for pin-money." When Mr. Connors emerged, a small, chirruping bunch of fuzz, cupped in his hand, lay snug in the velvet-lined pocket. At Sixth Avenue, where the great skeleton of the Elevated stalks mid-street, like a prehistoric _pithecanthropus erectus_, he paused for an instant in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048189 | the shadow of a gigantic black pillar, readjusting the fragile burden to his pocket. Stepping out to cross the street, simultaneously a great silent motor-car, noiseless but wild with speed, tore down the surface-car tracks, blacker in the hulking shadow of the Elevated trellis. A quick doubling up of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch violently thrown. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048190 | A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A uniform pushing through. A crowbar and the hard breathing of men straining to lift. A sob in the dark. Stand back! Stand | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048191 | back! * * * * * Dawn--then a blue, wintry sky, the color and hardness of enamel; and sunshine, bright, yet so far off the eye could stare up to it unsquinting. It lay against the pink-brocaded window-hangings of the suite in the Hotel Metropolis; it even crept in like a timid hand reaching toward, yet not quite touching, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048192 | full-flung figure of Mrs. Blutch Connors, lying, her cheek dug into the harshness of the carpet, there at the closed door to the bedroom--prone as if washed there, and her yellow hair streaming back like seaweed. Sobs came, but only the dry kind that beat in the throat and then come shrilly, like a sheet of silk swiftly torn. How | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048193 | frail are human ties, have said the _beaux esprits_ of every age in one epigrammatic fashion or another. But frailty can bleed; in fact, it's first to bleed. Lying there, with her face swollen and stamped with the carpet-nap, squirming in a grief that was actually abashing before it was heartbreaking, Ann 'Lisbeth Connors, whose only epiphany of life was | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048194 | love, and shut out from so much else that helps make life sweet, was now shut out from none of its pain. Once she scratched at the door, a faint, dog-like scratch for admission, and then sat back on her heels, staring at the uncompromising panel, holding back the audibility of her sobs with her hand. Heart-constricting silence, and only | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048195 | the breath of ether seeping out to her, sweet, insidious. She took to hugging herself violently against a sudden chill that rushed over her, rattling her frame. The bedroom door swung noiselessly back, fanning out the etheric fumes, and closed again upon an emerging figure. "Doctor--quick--God!--What?" He looked down upon her with the kind of glaze over his eyes that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048196 | Bellini loved to paint, compassion for the pain of the world almost distilled to tears. "Doctor--he ain't--" "My poor little lady!" "O God--no--no--no! No, Doctor, no! You wouldn't! Please! Please! You wouldn't let him leave me here all alone, Doctor! O God! you wouldn't! I'm all alone, Doctor! You see, I'm all alone. Please don't take him from me. He's | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048197 | mine! You can't! Promise me, Doctor! My darlin' in there--why are you hurtin' him so? Why has he stopped hollerin'? Cut me to pieces to give him what he needs to make him live. Don't take him from me, Doctor. He's all I got! O God--God--please!" And fell back swooning, with an old man's tear splashing down as if to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048198 | revivify her. * * * * * The heart has a resiliency. Strained to breaking, it can contract again. Even the waiting women, Iseult and Penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea. When, out of the slough of dark weeks, Mrs. Connors took up life again, she was only beaten, not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000048199 | broken--a reed lashed down by storm and then resilient, daring to lift its head again. A wan little head, but the eyes unwashed of their blue and the irises grown large. The same hard sunshine lay in its path between the brocade curtains of a room strangely denuded. It was as if spring had died there, when it was only | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.