Life — August 21, 1884 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PRINCESS SYNTAXINE. A NOVEL, BY “O. U, IDA.” CHAPTER I. BLUE sea, some palms with their heads tied up, some hedges of cactus and aloes, a long marble terrace shining in the sun, two bull-dog terrors sleeping in the same, a low, white house with green shutters, overrun with honey- suckle and red ants. These all—together with a wood-shed, two chicken-villas and a dog cottage, made up a place which was known on the French Riviera as La Jinguermille. It was one of the most coveted spots on the whole seaboard of Savoy. To the house were attached many romantic legends (likewise a second mortgage), and, at present, it was rented for the summer to Prince Syntaxine. ‘The Princess Sardége Syntaxine, who had first set her heart on it, now sat, herself, ina bamboo rocking-chair, and was looking at the building and thinking that decidedly she did not like it. A Journal Amusant lay on her lap. “It is dreadfully low!” she exclaimed, after a long and thoughtful survey of the chateau. “Tf that is the case, why do you read it?” said her com- panion. ‘It is amusing, at all events.” “How stupid you are!” said the Princess. “1 don't mean the Yournal,; 1 mean the house. It is incongruous. 1 don’t like it. Look at the ginger-bread work! It is a perfect jumble!" “For myself, | am fond of ginger-bread and jumbles,” re- marked the lady who had spoken before. She was sitting with a litter of books by her side, and with a copy of Punch held upside down in front of her, Rather a difficult way to read, you think. Well, it was Punch. “ The whole place looks like the conventional scene on a N theatre-curtain,” continued Princess Syntaxine. “ The house is shockingly small. And just look at those palms, with their heads tied up, as if they had the neuralgia !” “ The palms are old,” said the Lady Branchport, in reply. “ They are historical.” “ They are full of dates, I suppose you mean,” rejoined the Princess. ‘Dates? Bah! They look to me more like stewed prunes.” “That is because the gardener prunes them,” interrupted her ladyship. “You can’t palm off any puns on me, Princess.” The princess was worsted and knit her brows. What she knit with the worsted I cannot tell you, but it is a way that princesses have of showing their discomfiture. After a well- known habit of royalty, she would also have “ bit her lip,” but she had such alittle bit o’ lip that she could n’t doso. Mean- while, Lady Branchport’s British sense-of-humor was revelling in the joke. “The house resembles a cigar-store,” the Princess went on. “Look at that wooden image standing on the steps !” “Wooden image?” echoed her Ladyship. “It is your husband, Pluton Alexander Demrichovitch Hoopinkoff, Prince of Syntaxine. He has, indeed, been standing almost motion- less, and even now that he walks, he moves very slowly.” Quite right,” said the Princess, with an aristocratic little yawn. “So would you if you had such a long name to | carry.” The Prince was approaching, and so she raised her parasol and prepared to take a nap. comicbooks.com