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Israel Zangwill
The Old Maids' Club
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664592095
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.
The Reader My Book.
My Book The Reader.
chapter. Page.
The Algebra of Love, Plus other Things 9
The Honorary Trier 19
The Man in the Ironed Mask 27
The Club gets Advertised 43
The Princess of Portman Square 50
The Grammar of Love 86
The Idyl of Trepolpen 98
More about the Cherub 125
Of Wives and their Mistresses 133
The Good Young Men who Lived 147
Adventures in Search of the Pole 161
The Arithmetic and Physiology of Love 188
The English Shakespeare 198
The Old Young Woman and the New 224
The Mysterious Advertiser 244
The Club Becomes Popular 264
A Musical Bar 277
The Beautiful Ghoul 291
La Femme Incomprise 308
The Inaugural Soiree 319
THE OLD MAIDS' CLUB.
CHAPTER I.
THE ALGEBRA OF LOVE, PLUS OTHER THINGS.
The Old Maids' Club was founded by Lillie Dulcimer in her sweet seventeenth year. She had always been precocious and could analyze her own sensations before she could spell. In fact she divided her time between making sensations and analyzing them. She never spoke Early English—the dialect which so enraged Dr. Johnson—but, like John Stuart Mill, she wrote a classical style from childhood. She kept a diary, not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication only. It was labelled "Lillie Day by Day," and was posted up from her fifth year. Judging by the analogy of the rest, one might construct the entry for the first day of her life. If she had been able to record her thoughts, her diary would probably have begun thus:—
"Sunday, September 3rd: My birthday. Wept at the sight of the world in which I was to be so miserable. The atmosphere was so stuffy—not at all pleasing to the æsthetic faculties. Expected a more refined reception.