Marion Darche: A Story Without CommentCrawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
General
Marion Darche: A Story Without Comment
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Married women -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
The people in all these different sets are very far from being
unconscious of one another's existence. Sometimes they would like to
change from one set to another and cannot, sometimes other people wish
them to change and they will not, sometimes they exchange places, and
sometimes by a considerable effort, or at considerable expense, they
change themselves. The man whose occupations, or tastes, or
necessities, lead him far beyond the bounds of the one particular field
to which he belongs, may see a vast deal that is interesting and of
which his own particular friends and companions know nothing whatever.
There are a certain number of such men in every great city, and there
are a certain number of women also, who, by accident or choice, know a
little more of humanity in general than their associates. They
recognise each other wherever they meet. They speak the same language.
Without secret signs or outward badges they understand instinctively
that they belong to the small and exceptional class of human beings. If
they meet for the first time, no matter where, the conversation of each
is interesting to the other; they go their opposite ways never to meet
again, perhaps, but feeling that for a few minutes, or a few hours,
they have lived in an atmosphere far more familiar to them than that of
their common everyday life. They are generally the people who can
accomplish things, not hard to do in themselves but quite out of the
reach of those whose life runs in a single groove. They very often have
odd experiences to relate and sometimes are not averse to relating
them. They are a little mysterious in their ways and they do not care
to be asked whither they are going nor whence they come. They are not
easily surprised by anything, but they sometimes do not remember to
which particular social set an idea, a story, or a prejudice belongs,
especially if they are somewhat preoccupied at the time. This
occasionally makes their conversation a little startling, if not
incomprehensible, but they are generally considered to be agreeable
people and if they have good manners and dress like human beings they
are much sought after in society for the simple reason that they are
very hard to find.
In New York walking is essentially the luxury of the rich. The
hard-working poor man has no time to lose in such old-fashioned sport
and he gets from place to place by means of horse cars and elevated
roads, by cabs or in his own carriage, according to the scale of his
poverty. The man who has nothing to do keeps half-a-dozen horses and
enjoys the privilege of walking, which he shares with women and
four-footed animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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