Bertram Cope’s Year quotes

What is a man’s best age?

Peter Ibbetson, entering dreamland with complete freedom to choose, chose twenty-eight, and kept there. But twenty-eight, for our present purpose, has a drawback: a man of that age, if endowed with ordinary gifts and responsive to ordinary opportunities, is undeniably—a man;

“Here as an undergraduate, yes,” he acknowledged. “Unregarded dust. Dirt beneath your feet. In rainy weather, mud.”

“Mud!” echoed Medora Phillips loudly, with an increased pressure on his long, narrow hand. “Why, Babylon was built of mud⁠—of mud bricks, anyway. And the Hanging Gardens⁠ ⁠… !”

She still clung, looking up his slopes terrace by terrace.

Cope kept his self-possession and smiled brilliantly.

“Gracious!” he said, no less resonant than before. “Am I a landscape garden? Am I a stage-setting? Am I a⁠—?”

Medora Phillips finally dropped his hand. “You’re a wicked, unappreciative boy,” she declared. “I don’t know whether to ask you to my house or not. But you may make yourself useful in this house, at least.

“There were macaroons,” he replied; “and there was some sort of layer-cake. It was too sticky. These are more sensible.”

“Never mind sense. If there is cake, I want it. Tell Amy to put it on a plate.”

“Off with you—parrot! And bring a fork too.”

They took him there as a child for a choral service, and he thought it was the rose itself that sang. And there was Petrarch, and the young Milton—both talking about ‘melodious tears’—and something of the same sort in ‘The Blessed Damosel.’ And—”

“A psychological catch for which there ought to be a name. Perhaps there is a name.”

“Well, as I say, the light rose, shone, and sang. I didn’t see it—I never see anybody. But his voice came up here quite distinctly. It seemed good to have a man in the house.

“What kind of manners did he have for you?”

“Well, there you rather get me. He called me ‘sir,’ with a touch of deference; yet somehow I felt as if I were standing too close to an electric fan.”

“Yes, even when they indulge a show of deference, they contrive to blow our gray hairs about our wrinkled temples.”

Not that it would have mattered much, as the distances would have been short and the night was clear starlight. But they could all stay where they were, and I walked home in quite different company.”

Cope threw back his Oriental table-cover once more and drew out a few additional sheets of paper.

“One of them is an artist. She paints portraits, and possibly other things. Oh, I was going to say there is an art-gallery at the top of the house. Her husband—I mean Mrs. Phillips’—was a painter and collector himself;

“Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the general welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to it. I don’t feel that I’m an especially creditable one.”

“So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts come up and slap us in the face.”

Randolph rose and relieved the basswood of the first garments. “Are you about ready for that final dip?”

“The deuce!” he thought. “Enough is enough.”

Despite his success with the Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even flustered.

That hand was too much like the hand of possession. The girl was stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor. He struck ahead with a quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, however:

Despite his success with the Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even flustered. That hand was too much like the hand of possession.

The girl was stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor.

He struck ahead with a quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, however: Hortense had come like a puff of wind. Even a second squall from the same quarter would not be altogether amiss.

She “wouldn’t hurt a kitten,” we say; and we assume that her “striking out a line for herself” is the last thing she would try to do.

Yet such an unimpressive and disarming façade may mask large chambers of stubbornness and tenacity.

Amy knew how long and hard she had thought of Cope, and she asked for some evidence that he had been thinking long and hard of her. She desired a “response.” But, in fact, he had been thinking of her only when he must.

“Our house is full of him!” Foster burst out raucously. He had removed the green abat-jour, for the candle-shades (as they sometimes will) were performing their office. In the low but clear light his face seemed distorted.

“He rises to my floor like incense. The very halls and stairways reek with his charms and perfections.”

“Well, you escape him here,” said Randolph ruefully.

Cope awakened at seven. After an early interval of happy lightness, there came suddenly and heavily the crushing sense of his predicament.

How monstrous it was that one instant of time, one ill-considered action, one poorly-chosen word could clamp a repellent burden on a man for the rest of his life!

Well, he must expect telephone messages and letters. They came. That afternoon Mrs. Peck had “a lady’s voice” to report: “It sounded like a young lady’s voice,” she added. And she looked at Cope with some curiosity:

This left Medora Phillips unscathed.

“Tea puts on no paint,” she observed, and was lost in the press.

It need not be assumed that knowledge of Carolyn Thorpe’s verse gained wide currency through University circles, but there was a copy of the magazine in the University library. Lemoyne saw it there. He scarcely knew whether to be pleased or vexed.

He felt that Randolph was trying to stay young rather late, and was showing himself inclined to “go” with younger men longer than they would welcome him. Why didn’t he consort with people of his own age and kind?

He was old; so why couldn’t he be old?

The talk led—through Cope—to reminiscences of life in Winnebago.

“Why does anybody care? And for what? For the thing that is just out of reach. He’s cool; he’s selfish; he’s indifferent. Yet, somehow, frost and fire join end to end and make the circle complete.” He fell into reflection.

“It’s all like children straining upward for an icicle, and presently slipping, with cracked pates, on the ice below.”

“Well, my pate isn’t cracked.”

“I like you as well as another; no more, no less. I am in no position to think of love and marriage, and I have no inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and nothing more with anybody.”

The sentences came with the cruel detachment of bullets; but, “Not again, not twice,” was his uppermost thought.

Any bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of the past holiday season.

Peter, in the background, again thoughtfully felt his face and became conscious of a growing ache in the muscles of his arms. He retired, with a smile, to a still more distant plane.

The regular did the work and the volunteer got the praise.

Mrs. Phillips presently gave up her drooping hold on the reluctant Cope and called Peter forward. “Is anything missing?” she asked.

“You talk like a book!” said Foster, with blunt disdain.

“Language⁠—” began Randolph.

“—was made to conceal thought,” completed the other. “Stop talking. Stop thinking. Or, if you must think, just get your thoughts back on your business.”