The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A NovelPhillips, David Graham
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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig: A Novel
Phillips, David Graham
Adventure stories; Fiction
There are people who are wholly indifferent about their surroundings,
and lead the life dictated by civilized custom only because they are
slaves of custom, Margaret was not one of these. She not only adopted
all the comforts and luxuries that were current, she also spent much
tune in thinking out new luxuries, new refinements upon those she
already had. She was through, and through the luxurious idler; she made
of idling a career--pursued it with intelligent purpose where others
simply drifted, yawning when pastimes were not provided for them. She
was as industrious and ingenious at her career as a Craig at furthering
himself and his ideas in a public career.
Like the others of her class she left the care of her mind to chance. As
she had a naturally good mind and a bird-like instinct for flitting
everywhere, picking out the food from the chaff, she made an excellent
showing even in the company of serious people. But that was accident.
Her person was her real care. To her luxurious, sensuous nature every
kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove
in every way to make it keener. She took the greatest care of her
health, because health meant beauty and every nerve and organ in
condition to enjoy to its uttermost capacity.
Because of this care it was often full three hours and half between the
entrance of Selina and her own exit, dressed and ready for the day. And
those three hours and a half were the happiest of her day usually,
because they were full of those physical sensations in which she most
delighted. Her first move, after Selina had awakened her, was to spend
half an hour in "getting the yawns out." She had learned this
interesting, pleasant and amusing trick from a baby in a house where she
had once spent a week. She would extend herself at full length in the
bed, and then slowly stretch each separate muscle of arm and leg, of
foot and hand, of neck and shoulders and waist. This stretching process
was accompanied by a series of prolonged, profound, luxurious yawns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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