United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Nobody paid the least attention to the two strangers, and at last it flashed upon Vanderhuyn that he and Vail were both invisible to the throng around them. The Presence stopped in front of a table where two young men sat. They were playing euchre, and they were drinking. It is an old adage that truth is told in wine, and with some men sense comes with whisky.
He was horrified afterward to think how near he had come, later in the evening, to addressing the company as "Gentlemen of the Smallpox Hospital." Charley drank more wine and punch than usual. Those who sat near him looked at one another significantly, in a way that implied their belief that Vanderhuyn was too much elated over his election.
Vail consulted Vanderhuyn about his costume, and was told that he must wear evening dress; and, never having seen anything but provincial society, he went with perfect assurance to a tailor's and ordered a new frock coat and a white vest. When he saw that the other gentlemen present wore dress coats, and that most of them had black vests, he was in some consternation.
In its day it numbered the choicest spirits in New York, and the very center of all of them was this same Charley Vanderhuyn, whose face, the boys used to say, was like the British Empire for on it the sun never set.
Charley Vanderhuyn said "The Dickens!" and though his meaning was indefinite, he really meant it, whatever it might be. He looked up at the ornamental figure carved on the rich headboard of his bed as if he suspected that the headboard of English walnut had spoken in Irish.
He had good blood in him, else he could never have founded the Christmas Club, for you can not get more out of a man than there is in his blood. And a very choice fruit of a very choice stock was and is our Charley Vanderhuyn. That everybody knows who knows him now, and that we all felt who knew him earlier in the days of the Hasheesh Club. You remember the Hasheesh Club, doubtless.
The circumstances were calculated to suggest equally thoughts of the Great Teller of Stories and of the Great Story-teller, and I have a mind to amuse you at this Christmas season by telling you the circumstances, and letting you decide, if you can, which Dickens it was that Charles Vanderhuyn intended.
A man with golden hair was pacing the floor. "There's that devil again!" he said, pointing to the blank wall. "Now he's gone. You see, Carrie, I could quit if I had anybody to help me. Oh! I heard to night that Charley Vanderhuyn had been elected president of the Hasheesh. And I saw him an hour ago on a Second Avenue car. I wish Charley would come and talk to me.
There, in the dim light, was the aquiline nose like an eagle's beak, there were the steady, unwavering gray eyes, with that same earnest, wistful look fastened on Vanderhuyn; the features were Vail's, but the face was plowed and pitted fearfully as with the smallpox.
Charley Vanderhuyn could not tell whether he meant Charles Dickens or Nick. Perhaps you can. Indeed, it doesn't seem to matter much, after all. A narrative of this sort, like a French sermon, divides itself into three parts.
Word Of The Day