The Coast of Bohemia | Page 2

You were at least a doting parent,

if not a wise one, and in your fondness you did your best to spoil me.
You gave me two heroines, and you know very well that before you
were done you did not know but you preferred Charmian to Cornelia.
And you had nothing whatever to build Charmian upon, not the
slightest suggestion from life, where you afterwards encountered her
Egyptian profile! I think I ought to say that you had never been asked
to a Synthesis dance when you wrote that account of one in me; and
though you have often been asked since, you have never had the
courage to go for fear of finding out how little it was like your
description.
"But if Charmian was created out of nothing, what should you say if I
were frank about the other characters of my story? Could you deny that
the drummer who was first engaged to Cornelia was anything more
than a materialization from seeing a painter very long ago make his two
fingers do a ballet-dance? Or that Ludlow was not at first a mere
pointed beard and a complexion glimpsed in a slim young Cuban one
night at Saratoga? Or that Cornelia's mother existed by any better right
than your once happening to see a poor lady try to hide the gap in her
teeth when she smiled?
"When I think what a thing of shreds and patches I am, I wonder that I
have any sort of individual temperament or consciousness at all. But I
know that I have, and that you wrote me with pleasure and like me still.
You think I have form, and that, if I am not very serious, I am sincere,
and that somehow I represent a phase of our droll American civilization
truly enough. I know you were vexed when some people said I did not
go far enough, and insisted that the coast of Bohemia ought to have
been the whole kingdom. As if I should have cared to be that! There are
shady places inland where I should not have liked my girls to be, and
where I think my young men would not have liked to meet them; and I
am glad you kept me within the sweet, pure breath of the sea. I think I
am all the better book for that, and, if you are fond of me, you have
your reasons. I----"
"Upon my word," I interrupted at this point, "it seems to me that you
are saying rather more for yourself than I could say for you, if you are

one of my spoiled children. Don't you think we had both better give the
reader a chance, now?"
"Oh, if there are to be any readers!" cried the book, and lapsed into the
silence of print.
[Illustration: W. D. Howells.]

Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents has been added for the
convenience of the reader.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
XXI. II. XXII. III. XXIII. IV. XXIV. V. XXV. VI. XXVI. VII. XXVII.
VIII. XXVIII. IX. XXIX. X. XXX. XI. XXXI. XII. XXXII. XIII.
XXXIII. XIV. XXXIV. XV. XXXV. XVI. XXXVI. XVII. XXXVII.
XVIII. XXXVIII. XIX. XXXIX. XX.

THE COAST OF BOHEMIA.

I.
The forty-sixth annual fair of the Pymantoning County Agricultural
Society was in its second day. The trotting-matches had begun, and the
vast majority of the visitors had abandoned the other features of the
exhibition for this supreme attraction. They clustered four or five deep
along the half-mile of railing that enclosed the track, and sat sweltering
in the hot September sun, on the benching of the grandstand that

flanked a stretch of the course. Boys selling lemonade and peanuts, and
other boys with the score of the races, made their way up and down the
seats with shrill cries; now and then there was a shriek of girls' laughter
from a group of young people calling to some other group, or
struggling for a programme caught back and forth; the young fellows
shouted to each other jokes that were lost in mid-air; but, for the most
part, the crowd was a very silent one, grimly intent upon the rival
sulkies as they flashed by and lost themselves in the clouds that
thickened over the distances of the long, dusty loop. Here and there
some one gave a shout as a horse broke, or settled down to his work
under the guttural snarl of his driver; at times the whole throng burst
into impartial applause as a horse gained or lost a length; but the quick
throb of the hoofs on the velvety earth and the whir of the flying wheels
were the sounds that chiefly made themselves heard.
The spectacle had the importance which multitude givers, and Ludlow
found