His sermons usually contained many “shiny, well-worn platitudes which are always tedious.”
Sophy Firmalden, one of the leading characters, endowed with good looks and native wit, was never very happy. One is never wholly satisfied. “The child wears the mother’s skirts enviously while the mother mourns her youth.”
“There was that fastidious and elusive instinct in Sophy which always makes for suffering.”
Inclined to fanaticism and moody, an over developed conscience kept her from marrying the one man she loved because he was irreligious. They were never at ease together for their relation could never degenerate into common comradeship.
Sent abroad to forget Lessard, she thought she had done so, and married another. “What a charred trail she left in her path!” Becoming cynical, she said “she would never again allow herself to care much for anybody—it was always so disappointing.” She declared there were two kinds of men, “Those who were born to protect us, and those who were born to understand us”—her husband belonged to the former.
She knew little of the world—had not even seen “Fedora.” One of her friends said it could not harm her—she could not possibly understand it.
She had a passion for good clothes. “A girl who is satisfied with her wardrobe can bear many privations.” “Sophy’s silk dresses were the source of much fortitude in her domestic philosophy.”
James Firmalden’s first love, Nannie Cloots, was of obscure origin—her mother having once been an ornament of the ballet. Reared with a fanatical regard for appearances, she was “picturesque, artless and fresh in her absurd ideas.”
“She was a chaser after celebrities—and wore claret-colored silk at ten o’clock in the morning. Her chief delight was to associate with frumpish Philistines.” “She saw the world; and found it stuffed with sawdust.”