Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Majorie Daw Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Book Excerpt: ...the quietest of lives. I wish I were a novelist. This old house, with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster of pines that turn themselves into aeolian harps every time the wind blows, would be the place in which to write a summer romance. It should be a story with the odors of the forest and the breath of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one of that Russian fellow's--what's his name?--Tourguenieff, Turguenef, Turgenif, Toorguniff, Turgenjew--nobody knows how to spell him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alexandra Paulovna could stir the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable condition. If I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House and catch one for you; or, better still, I would find you one over the way. Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly opp...