There never was, I suppose, in the history of the world a time when the sheer vulgar fatness of wealth, without any kind of aristo...cratic elegance to redeem it, was so obtrusive as in those years before 1914 ... . from the whole decade ... there seems to breathe forth a smell of the more vulgar, un-grown-up kinds of luxury, a smell of brilliantine and creme de menthe and soft- centered chocolates--an atmosphere, as it were of eating everlasting strawberry ices on green lawns to the tune of the Eton Boating Song.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With Uncle George in the stern, and Tom in the bows, each using a spruce pole about twelve feet long, pointed with iron, and polin...g on the same side, we shot up the rapids like a salmon, the water rushing and roaring around, so that only a practiced eye could distinguish a safe course, or tell what was deep water and what rocks, frequently grazing the latter on one or both sides, with a hundred as narrow escapes as ever the Argo had in passing through the Symplegades. I, who had had some experience in boating, had never experienced any half so exhilarating before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »