{"product_id":"2940012244093","title":"LAURENTIA: A Tale of Japan","description":"Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"WE shall send the dogs and servants at once to Washington Square,\" said Mrs. Floyd-Curtis, settling another little cushion in the curve beneath her shoulder-blades, as she leaned back in her steamer-chair on the deck of the Etruria, homeward bound. \"My husband will of course meet us at the dock, and take all the bother of customs off our hands. It is possible we may sleep at home for a night, but I am more than half decided to take Lily directly to Tupelo. It will be in the middle of the week, you know, and there's no place so good to rest in as Tupelo in the middle of the week. So soothing! Such an atmosphere. So unAmerican, in short.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ah, yes! there is nothing like Tupelo,\" murmured Mrs. Clay, whose manner conveyed a confidential tinge to her simplest utterance. In her heart she was saying: \"Why, the woman is delicious! Who would suppose she had never been there, and that she knows I know it? It is all right. I am safe in taking her up this way. For a beginner she's immense.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mr. Curtis has bought land there recently, and is waiting for me to decide on the plans to build our cottage. One needs something to do away with the first impression of those nasty New York streets on landing,\" pursued the elder dame. \"Actually, the whole thing seems more dingy and deplorable to me every time I come back. Such a dreadful rattle in one's ears, the sidewalks so filthy and obstructed, the lower classes so presuming, and the sun glaring so you can't help seeing everything. Lily, if you'll believe me, likes it. She says it makes her blood jump. Why, when Lord Frederick told her his cab had gone into a rut and smashed a hat for him before he had driven a block away from the Cunard dock, last year, and that he'd half a mind to write a letter to the papers in complaint, Lily made fun of him so that he almost found it out. Such a tiresome child! One might think she had been educated in the States, instead of having every advantage Europe can afford.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey were two days out from Queenstown. It was a fine October morning, that brought up the invalids in force. The ship might have been a great floating hospital. All sorts and conditions of men and women were equalized by costumes and attitudes suggesting alternately a mummy and an Indian papoose. The deck steward, with fruits and drinks, was the hero of the hour. Conversation among those of the sufferers who knew each other had sunk to the lowest ebb. To keep up, to keep respectable, in most of them, precluded all mental as well as physical effort. \"Please go away,\" breathed a bride to her beloved one. \"I was just feeling better when you said 'Poor darling!' and now I 'm ill again.\" \"There is no use in your being witty,\" another young woman remarked to the man who was endeavoring to make her forget her woes. \"If I laugh, I'm gone.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThose provoking people whom the consciousness of the screw did not affect were variously disposed. Some were walking as if without intention to stop short of the other continent. Others formed into confidential if lethargic groups, holding novels, lap-dogs, parasols, turning their backs upon the ailing, each woman secretly wondering if shipboard was as unbecoming to her as to her comrade. With the two ladies we have to do with, matters had already progressed far beyond the usual unfolding of trivial plans and personalities common to voyagers at sea. Mrs. Floyd-Curtis (note, please, the fashionable hyphen, now in such common use: it had been acquired and packed up with her latest batch of London stationery; \"Mrs. Eliphalet F. Curtis\" the good lady had gone forth from Sandy Hook in May) was a fine specimen of the American woman in her forties. Her features were small and regular, her complexion was like a china doll's; her dark hair, worn in scallops on her brow, was even at this hour elaborately dressed; a veil of dotted lace covered the tip of her nose, and she was buttoned up in a tight-fitting Redfern suit of tweeds. The rug over her knees, half concealing an abject scrap of a thing she called an Algerian poodle, was of softest otter. The little cushions tucked in around her spine were of silk-covered eider-down. They—the deck-chair, the rug, and the apology for a dog—had been brought out and put in place for my lady by an obsequious menial, who immediately after retired from service, and was prone during the rest of the voyage. This one act, however, performed with such radiant effect before the eyes of the other passengers, fully justified his engagement as a first-class traveling footman.","brand":"Leila's Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47145279815920,"sku":"2940012244093","price":1.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012244093_p0.jpg?v=1763553786","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012244093","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}