Seven Keys to Baldpate quotes

No, Mr. Magee decided he would not. The train that had just roared away into the dusk had not brought him from the region of skyscrapers and derby hats for deeds of knight errantry up state. Anyhow, the girl's tears were none of his business.

A railway station was a natural place for grief—a field of many partings, upon whose floor fell often in torrents the tears of those left behind.

A friend, mayhap a lover, had been whisked off into the night by the relentless five thirty-four local. Why not a lover? Surely about such a dainty trim figure as this courtiers hovered as moths about a flame.

"Thanks," said the ticket agent. "I get asked the same old questions so often, one like yours sort of breaks the monotony. Sorry I can't help you.

She's a woman, and the Lord only knows why women cry. And sometimes I reckon even He must be a little puzzled.

Now, my wife—"

"H'm—it ain't much of a place," admitted the man, "though it ain't the general rule with visitors to burst into tears at sight of it. Yes, Upper Asquewan is slow, and no mistake. It gets on my nerves sometimes.

Nothing to do but work, work, work, and then lay down and wait for to-morrow.

I used to think maybe some day they'd transfer me down to Hooperstown—there's moving pictures and such goings-on down there. But the railroad never notices you—unless you go wrong. Yes, sir, sometimes I want to clear out of this town myself."

"we get a lot of complaints about trunks not coming, from pretty swell people, too. It sort of cheers things." His eye roamed with interest over Mr. Magee's New York attire. "But Baldpate Inn is shut up tight now.

This is nothing but an annex to a graveyard in winter.

You wasn't thinking of stopping off here, was you?"

Magee. "But now and then I get a longing to do something that will make the critics sit up—the real thing, you know. The other day I picked up a newspaper and found my latest brain-child advertised as 'the best fall novel Magee ever wrote'.

It got on my nerves—I felt like a literary dressmaker, and I could see my public laying down my fall novel and sighing for my early spring styles in fiction.

I remembered that once upon a time a critic advised me to go away for ten years to some quiet spot, and think. I decided to do it. Baldpate Inn is the quiet spot."

"I hope so," responded Mr. Magee. "

I want to be so lonesome I'll sob myself to sleep every night. It's the only road to immortality.

Good-by, Mrs. Quimby. In my fortress on the mountain I shall expect an occasional culinary message from you." He took her plump hand; this motherly little woman seemed the last link binding him to the world of reality.

Mr. Quimby stood for a moment in dazed silence. Then he turned, and the yellow of his lantern fell on the dazzling snow ahead. Together the two climbed Baldpate Mountain.

Baldpate Inn did not stand tiptoe on the misty mountain-top.

Instead it clung with grim determination to the side of Baldpate, about half-way up, much as a city man clings to the running board of an open street-car. This was the comparison Mr.

The two stood together in a great bare room.

The rugs had been removed, and such furniture as remained had huddled together, as if for warmth, in the center of the floor.

When they stepped forward, the sound of their shoes on the hard wood seemed the boom that should wake the dead.

"This is just between us," he said. "At that point the trouble began. It came from my being naturally a very brave man. I could have died—easy.

The brave thing was to live.

To go on, day after day, devoid of Arabella—say, that took courage. I wanted to try it. I'm a courageous man, as I say."

"I believe every word of it. It's all as real as the haberdashery to me. I'll keep my eye peeled for novelists. What gets me is, when you boil our two fly-by-night stories down, I've come here to be alone. You want to be alone.

We can't be alone here together.

One of us must clear out."

A gentleman of my acquaintance caught a glimpse of perfect happiness while he was in the midst of an effort to corner the pickle market. Another evolved the scheme of a perfect ode to the essential purity of woman in—a Broadway restaurant.

So, like lightning across the blackest sky, our poetic moments come.

"

"Yes, that was the dreadful version of my remark that was spread broadcast. Up to the time that story appeared, I had no idea as to what sort of creature the peroxide blonde might be.

I protested, of course. I might as well have tried to dam a tidal wave with a table fork.

The wrath of the world swept down upon me. I was deluged with telegrams, editorials, letters, denouncing me. Firm-faced females lay in wait for me and waved umbrellas in my eyes.

I congratulate you on your common sense. And perhaps, as the years go by, you will realize that had you married your Arabella, you would not have found life all honey and roses. She was fickle, unworthy of you. Soon you will forget.

Youth—ah, youth throws off its sorrow like a cloak.

A figure not original with me. And now—the gentleman in the—er—the bed quilt. Has he, too, a story?"

"You're young," interrupted the little man, rising. "There ain't no use to debate it with you. I might as well try to argue with a storm at sea.

Some men keep the illusion to the end of their days, and I hope you're one.

I reckon I'll start your fire."

'I'm cured,' he says to me. 'Not for me.' Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widow just to see if what the seventy said was true.

I'm mortal. I hang around the buzz-saw.

If you give me a little money, I'll go down to the village and buy the provisions for lunch."

"That's horrid of him, isn't it?" she smiled. "

Every good hermit is equipped with a broken heart.

I certainly shan't bother him. I came down to get some water."

"We may seem over-eager," commented Professor Bolton. "I have no doubt we do. It is only natural.

With nothing to look forward to but the next meal, the human animal attaches a preposterous importance to his feeding.

We are in the same case as the summer guests—"

"Black flag flying, decks cleared for action—I saw the rocking-chair fleet go by." She smiled faintly. "We always called them that. Bitter, unkind old women who sat hour after hour on the veranda, and rocked and gossiped, and gossiped and rocked.

All the old women in the world seem to gather at summer hotels.

And, oh, the cruel mouths the fleet had—just thin lines of mouths—I used to look at them and wonder if any one had ever kissed them."

"

The autumn always came,

" smiled the girl.

'It's all a great big joke. I don't believe in these people myself. I've just created them to make them dance for you. Don't be fooled—it's only a novel.' I don't like that sort of thing.

I want a writer really to mean all he says from the bottom of his heart.

"

Norton easily, "but women don't make no trouble, I know that. I think the man's crazy, myself, and I'd tell him so if he wasn't the cook." She paused, for Peters had entered the room. There was silence while he changed the courses. "

It's getting so now you can't say the things to a cook you can to a king,

" she finished, after the hermit had retired.

Safe for the moment behind a locked door, Mr. Magee paused to get his breath.

The glory of battle filled his soul. It was not until long afterward that he realized the battle had been a mere scuffle in the dark.

He felt his cheeks burn with excitement like a sweet girl graduate's—the cheeks of a man who had always prided himself he was the unmoved cynic in any situation.

The girl deliberately stopped.

There was never less of sweet gracious surrender in a suffragette hurling a stone through a shop-keeper's window.

She eyed Mr. Magee pityingly, and they stood until Mr. Max caught up with them.

"I guess I'm about the poorest liar in the world," he said. "

I never got away with but one lie in my life, and that was only for a little while.

It was a masterpiece while it lasted, too. But it was my only hit as a liar. Usually I fail, as I have failed now. I lied when I said I couldn't cook for you because I had to be true to my hermit's oath.

I wander where I will. No woman tells me my hour for going out, or my hour for coming in. I wander. For company I have her picture—as I saw her last—with twinkling feet that never touched earth. As the spirit moves, I go.

You can move the memory of a woman in a flash, my boy, but it takes two months to get the real article started, and then like as not she's forgot everything of importance.

Ever thought of that? You should. You're going to be as happy as I am. Study me. Reflect.' I waved my carpet-slippered feet toward the palms. I had certainly made an impression on Alexander McMann.

Her great eyes were wistful, her face was pale. She came toward them through the red firelight. Mr. Magee saw what a fool he had been to waver in his allegiance even for a moment. For he loved her, wanted her, surely.

The snow-capped heights are inspiring, but far more companionable is the brook that sparkles in the valley.

"It's rather dull, isn't it?" asked Miss Norton of the Thornhill girl. By the side of the taller woman she seemed slight, almost childish. "Have you seen the pictures of the admiral, Miss Thornhill? Looking at them is our one diversion."

What if it were so? With the hand of a girl like this in his, what if the pleasant by-paths of his solitude did bear hereafter the "No Thoroughfare" sign?

Long the road might be, and he would rejoice in its length; dusty perhaps, but her smile through the dust would make it all worth while.

He stooped to her.

"Peters," reproved Magee. "That's hardly courteous to our guests."

"Living alone on the mountain," replied the hermit from the dining-room door, "you get to have such a high regard for the truth you can't put courtesy first. You want to, but you haven't the heart."

The winter guests took their places at the table, and the second December dinner at Baldpate Inn got under way. But not so genially as on the previous night did it progress. On the faces of those about him Mr. Magee noted worry and suspicion;

And then—the golden moment—the great moment in that quiet dreary cell—the moment of the discovery. A serum, a formula—what not. He gives it to the world and a few of the sick are well again, and a few of the sorrowful are glad.

Romance means neither youth nor power to me. It means—service.

"

"Don't tell any of your chorus friends about me," replied Magee. "I might not always prove so complacent.

Every man has his moments of falling for romance. Even you probably fell once—and what a fall was there.

"

I hope she won't, it would sort of put a crimp in it—but if she wants to I won't refuse. And maybe that book'll never get done.

Sometimes as I've sat in my shack at night and read, it's come to me that all the greatest works since the world began have been those that never got finished.

"

Yes, it'd be real funny—only Ellen never had much sense of humor. That was always her great trouble. If you ever marry, Mr. Magee, and I suppose you will, take my advice.

Marry a sense of humor first, and a woman incidental-like.

"

"It's an excellent one," replied Professor Bolton.

"The first essential of good will toward men is not to rob and debauch them."

"Oh, well, Doc, don't let's argue the matter," replied Cargan easily. "I ain't in the humor for it, anyhow. You got your beliefs, and I got my beliefs. And that ain't no reason why we should not smoke a couple of good cigars together.