When bedtime came do you think I got anything out of it?…’You may kiss my little hand,’she says….’You may kiss my little—that’s what you may do,’” the voices snarled with righteous bitterness. “When I asked her if she was goin’to come through she started to yell for the cops!… A woman who tried to pull one like that over here would get sent to Siberia!… A nice country, I don’t think!… Now, get this! Me, I’m a Frenchman, see!” the voice said with a convincing earnestness. “These guys know how to live, see! This is my country where I belong, see!… Johnny, luh même chose pour mwah et m’seer!… Fill’em up again, kid.”
“Carpen-teer!” the voices then rose jeeringly, in true accents of French pugnacity. “Sure, I’m a Frenchman—but Carpen-teer! Where do yuh get that stuff? Christ! Dempsey could’a' took that frog the best day that he ever saw!… An accident!” the voices yelled. “Whattya mean—an accident? Didn’t I see the whole thing with my own eyes? Wasn’t I back there then?… Wasn’t I talkin’t’Jack himself an hour after the fight was over?… An accident! Jesus! The only accident was that he let him last four rounds.’I could have taken him in the first if I wanted to,’Jack says to me…. Sure, I’m a Frenchman!” the voice said with belligerent loyalty. “But Carpenteer! Jesus! Where do you get that stuff?”
And, brother, I have heard the voices you will never hear, discussing the graces of a life more cultured than any you will ever know—and I know and I know, and yet it is still the same.
Bitterly, bitterly, Boston one time more! the flying leaf, the broken cloud—“I think,” said they, “that we will live here now. I think,” they said, “that we are running down to Spain next week, so Francis can do a little writing…. And really,” their gay yet cultivated tones continued, “it’s wonderful what you can do here if you only have a little money…. Yes, my dear!” their refined accents continued in a tone of gay conviction. “It’s really quite incredible, you know…. I happen to know of a real honest-to-goodness château near Blois that can be had for something less than $7000!… It’s all rather incredible, you know,” those light, half-English tones went on, “when you consider what it takes to live in Brookline!… Francis has always felt that he would like to do a little writing, and I feel somehow the atmosphere is better here for all that sort of thing—it really is, you know. Don’t you think so?” said those gay and cultivated tones of Boston which you, my brother, never yet have heard. “And after all,” those cultivated tones went on in accents
