Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder

they’ll be here like a plague of grasshoppers—fortune-hunters. You see, there are dozens of heiresses here with no young men of their own class. These days the young men from the big houses go off to Labrador with Dr. Grenfell to carry condensed milk to the Eskimos; or they go off, like my master, to photograph birds at the South Pole; or they go to ranches in Wyoming to break their legs. Some go off to Long Island where they hear there’s lots of fun to be had. No young man wants to enjoy himself under the eyes of his parents and his relatives. Except during Yacht Race Week and the Tennis Tournament no man under thirty would be seen here.”
    â€œNo single man under forty, Henry.”
    â€œThank you, ma’am. So when the hostesses want to give a dance for their beautiful daughters they call up their dear friend the Admiral at the Naval Station and ask him to send over forty young men that can waltz and one-step without stumbling. They’ve learned from experience, the old ladies, to put a lot of pure spring water in the punch. Another thing they do is to invite house-guests for a month at a time from the embassies in Washington—young counts and marquesses and barons that are climbing up the first steps in the diplomatic career. That’s the stuff! I came over to this country of yours, Choppers, as a ‘gentleman’ to an Honourable six removes from an earldom. He got engaged to a daughter of Dr. Bosworth at ‘Nine Gables’—nicest fellow you could hope to meet but he couldn’t get up before noon. Fell asleep at dinner parties; loved the meal but couldn’t stand the waits between courses. Even with my tactful persuasion he was an hour late for every appointment. His wife, who was as energetic as a beehive, divorced him with a cool million—that’s what they say. . . . All that an ambitious young man’s got to have is a pleasant way of talking, a pair of dancing pumps, and one little respectable letter of introduction and all the doors are open to him, including a card to the Casino. So at first we thought you were one of them.”
    â€œThank you, Henry.”
    â€œNevertheless, Mrs. Cranston, we wouldn’t think the worse of Mr. North here, if he found a sweet little thing in copper mines or railroads, would we?”
    â€œI advise against it, Mr. North.”
    â€œI have no intention of doing so, Mrs. Cranston, but may I ask your reasons against it?”
    â€œThe partner who owns the money owns the whip and a girl brought up to great wealth thinks she has great brains too. I’ll say no more. By the end of the summer you will have made your own observations.”
    I greatly enjoyed these pre-midnight conversations. If at times I thought of myself as Captain Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked on the island of Aquidneck and preparing to study the customs and manners there I could scarcely have fallen on better luck. Telescopes are generally mounted on tripods. One leg of mine was grounded on my daily visits on the Avenue; another rested on the experience and wisdom available to me at Mrs. Cranston’s; a third was still to seek.
    I was not sincere in promising Mrs. Cranston to call on her aid whenever a complicated and even dangerous situation arose. By nature I like to tend to my own business, to keep my mouth shut, and to scramble out of my own mistakes. Probably Mrs. Cranston soon knew that I was engaged eight or nine hours a week at “Nine Gables”—a “cottage” where something peculiar was certainly going on; she may have suspected that I was getting involved beyond my depths at the George F. Granberrys’ in a situation that might at any moment burst into a lurid conflagration of “yellow journalism.”
    In the matter that turned on my reading at “Wyckoff House” I did call on her for help and got it handsomely.

Diana Bell
    So there I was, bicycling my way up and down the Avenue and not