Richard Forrest, Bachelor — page 147: what you’re looking at

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

138 MISS CAMERON, THE MAGNET. You can’t deny that it is quaint, and unlike any place you were ever in before.’’ ‘It’s dirtier,’’ declared Gertrude, flatly. ‘‘Don’t you think so Miss Cameron?”’ ‘Some parts of it are very interesting,’’ replied Miss Cameron. ‘‘Non-committal, as usual,’’ laughed Gertrude. ‘‘Well, then, I’ll give my opinion of it without waiting for an in- , vitation; if I were obliged to stay here another week I should simply die of the blues, I’m sure of it. Where, oh, where did I ever get my ideas of it?”’ ‘“‘Where most people do,’’ returned Dick, who was care- - fully salting his egg; ‘‘from books. We flee here from the chill of civilized cities, hoping to fina sunshine and roses, 99 instead of which ‘‘We freeze,’’ put in Gertrude, drawing her feather boa, which she was seldom without now, closer around her. ‘‘_—lovely women in gorgeous costumes, leaning wist- fully against their latticed balconies, and longing, like caged birds, to escape——’’ continued Dick. ‘“While in reality we see only a lot of absurdly dressed creatures with hideous vails fastened to their noses, which give them the appearance of birds with broken beaks,’’ re- joined Gertrude, disgustedly. ‘‘It’s a delusion and a snare. ”’ ‘‘All the fault of the romances, my dear Mrs. Eldridge, ”’ said Dick. ‘‘To begin with, it is necessary, in order to make pleasant reading, to ignore the most terrible and de- pressing bugbear of all the East—the poverty. It reduces the lower classes to a state more degraded even than that of their own animals; they slave, toil, dig without cessa- tion, until they drop in the harness. Their parents did it Gomicbooksreom