Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Harlequin and Columbine
    Harlequin and Columbine
    Harlequin and Columbine
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Harlequin and Columbine

    By Newton Booth Tarkington

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Harlequin and Columbine was written in the year 1918 by Newton Booth Tarkington. This book is one of the most popular novels of Newton Booth Tarkington, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.

    This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooklassic
    Release dateJul 7, 2015
    ISBN9789635229932
    Harlequin and Columbine

    Read more from Newton Booth Tarkington

    Related to Harlequin and Columbine

    Related ebooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Getting Wrecked

      May 26, 2022

      It took a while, but a happy truth is gradually dawning on our summer opera companies. Reasons for hauling oneself to Glyndebourne (and its dog-and-pony ringers) have always been only tangentially connected to the witnessing of opera: viz. bitterly c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Chairman Of The Hoard

      May 13, 2022

      Chairman Of The Hoard
      8 min read

    • Article

      Robert Thicknesse on Opera

      Apr 27, 2023

      I WAS AS EXCITED AS everyone else to learn that opera actually exists in New Zealand — two things surely linked before only by their joint gold for the world’s least fashionable phenomena. Not only that, but it turns out that Kiwis have a thriving ne

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ship Of Fools

      Sep 29, 2022

      AS A SIMPLE GLANCE at most of them will tell you, there’s not a whole bunch of fun in being an opera critic — so we tend to greet the faintest prospect of joy with breathless hope. Imagine, then, the bitter gall we had to drink when the summer’s inco

      3 min read

    • Article

      Addicted To Books

      Jun 1, 2022

      The plaque on the door of my hotel room said ‘Superior Room’. Once inside, I searched for evidence for this rather grandiose claim. None was apparent, though there was a chocolate on the pillow. And the toilet paper had been folded into a neat point

      5 min read

    • Article

      Days Of Shattered Faith

      Dec 3, 2024

      Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai and tomorrow’s frontline in the Palleseen’s relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. On the ship, as it tacked in past the sea wall, she was in her coffin

      6 min read

    • Article

      Magic Moments

      Jul 25, 2024

      Magic Moments
      3 min read

    • Article

      DULCE DOMUM From The Wind In The Willows

      Nov 1, 2022

      DULCE DOMUM From The Wind In The Willows
      11 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Spring To Life

      Mar 30, 2023

      ● EVEN BY THE OLYMPIAN standards of the Covent Garden stalls, it was a top effort: the old dude beside me was snoring happily within five minutes of curtain-up on Rusalka. Actually at 200 quid a pop it’s not such a bad deal: for a start, you miss the

      3 min read

    • Article

      Man About Town

      May 27, 2021

      THE ARTISTE FORMERLY KNOWN as Meghan Markle — now Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex — has written a children’s book, The Bench. This has been greeted with excitement (in America) and dismay (in Britain). Personally, I’m delighted that one of the world’s

      3 min read

    • Article

      Guinness Was Good For Me

      Jul 28, 2021

      Guinness Was Good For Me
      4 min read

    • Article

      Into The Mystic

      Nov 25, 2021

      ATTENTIVE READERS WILL HAVE noticed that this column has spookily become the nerve-centre of the British opera world: like Richard Burton in The Medusa Touch, I merely have to dream up some new batshit hell and it instantly comes to pass. Of course i

      3 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      Oh No

      Jul 1, 2018

      Because past the angel at the gate, oh can turn like that, go under, straight into poetry. Here’s the god’s honest: a moment of calm recently came to me, so close to sleep it was sleep. In my dream I saw a girl whose dark t-shirt read: All is Failure

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un's Notes

      Jan 11, 2023

      Just before Christmas, historian Lady Antonia Fraser composed a verse on confronting that age-old companion to faith – doubt – at Farm Street Church, Mayfair. Nick Downes is one of the most treasured cartoonists at Oldie Towers (see above right for a

      4 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Aug 5, 2021

      [email protected] aroma diffuser 1. n. A scientific device that breaks “essential oils” down into smaller molecules, dispersing them into the air for a pleasant or calming effect on the gullible. 2. n. The arsehole. Barbie’s minge sim. Somethin

      8 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken

      Feb 4, 2019

      What she wanted was a kind of greatness that women were not allowed. The post ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Jun 20, 2024

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Dec 8, 2021

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Sound Of Music

      Apr 3, 2020

      The Sound Of Music
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Harlequin and Columbine

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Harlequin and Columbine - Newton Booth Tarkington

      978-963-522-993-2

      Chapter 1

      For a lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who caught it may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which brings within the boundaries of one November week the Horse Show and the roaring climax of the football months and the more dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the opera season. Some throbbing of attendant multitudes coming to the ears of Talbot Potter, he obeyed an inward call to walk to rehearsal by way of Fifth Avenue, and turning out of Forty-fourth Street to become part of the people-sea of the southward current, felt the eyes of the northward beating upon his face like the pulsing successions of an exhilarating surf. His Fifth Avenue knew its Talbot Potter.

      Strangers used to leisurely appraisals upon their own thoroughfares are apt to believe that Fifth Avenue notices nothing; but they are mistaken; it is New York that is preoccupied, not Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue eye, like a policeman's, familiar with a variety of types, catalogues you and replaces you upon the shelf with such automatic rapidity that you are not aware you have been taken down. Fifth Avenue is secretly populous with observers who take note of everything.

      Of course, among these peregrinate great numbers almost in a stupor so far as what is closest around them is concerned; and there are those, too, who are so completely busied with either the consciousness of being noticed, or the hope of being noticed, or the hatred of it, that they take note of nothing else. Fifth Avenue expressions are a filling meal for the prowling lonely joker; but what will most satisfy his cannibal appetite is the passage of the self-conscious men and women. For here, on a good day, he cannot fail to relish some extreme cases of their whimsical disease: fledgling young men making believe to be haughty to cover their dreadful symptoms, the mask itself thus revealing what it seeks to conceal; timid young ladies, likewise treacherously exposed by their defenses; and very different ladies, but in similar case, being retouched ladies, tinted ladies; and ladies who know that they are pretty at first sight, ladies who chat with some obscured companion only to offer the public a treat of graceful gestures; and poor ladies making believe to be rich ladies; and rich ladies making believe to be important ladies; and many other sorts of conscious ladies. And men—ah, pitiful!—pitiful the wretch whose hardihood has involved him in cruel and unusual great gloss and unsheltered tailed coat. Any man in his overcoat is wrapped in his castle; he fears nothing. But to this hunted creature, naked in his robin's tail, the whole panorama of the Avenue is merely a blurred audience, focusing upon him a vast glare of derision; he walks swiftly, as upon fire, pretends to careless sidelong interest in shop-windows as he goes, makes play with his unfamiliar cane only to be horror-stricken at the flourishings so evoked of his wild gloves; and at last, fairly crawling with the eyes he feels all over him, he must draw forth his handkerchief and shelter behind it, poor man, in the dishonourable affectation of a sneeze!

      Piquant contrast to these obsessions, the well-known expression of Talbot Potter lifted him above the crowd to such high serenity his face might have been that of a young Pope, with a dash of Sydney Carton. His glance fixed itself, in its benign detachment, upon the misty top of the Flatiron, far down the street, and the more frequent the plainly visible recognitions among the north-bound people, the less he seemed aware of them. And yet, whenever the sieving current of pedestrians brought momentarily face to face with him a girl or woman, apparently civilized and in the mode, who obviously had never seen him before and seemed not to care if it should be her fate never to repeat the experience, Talbot Potter had a certain desire. If society had established a rule that all men must instantly obey and act upon every fleeting impulse, Talbot Potter would have taken that girl or woman by the shoulders and said to her: What's the matter with you!

      At Forty-second Street he crossed over, proceeded to the middle of the block, and halted dreamily on the edge of the pavement, his back to the crowd. His face was toward the Library, with its two annoyed pet lions, typifying learning, and he appeared to study the great building. One or two of the passersby had seen him standing on that self-same spot before;—in fact, he always stopped there whenever he walked down the Avenue.

      For a little time (not too long) he stood there; and thus absorbed he was, as they say, a Picture. Moreover, being such a popular one, he attracted much interest. People paused to observe him; and all unaware of their attention, he suddenly smiled charmingly, as at some gentle pleasantry in his own mind—something he had remembered from a book, no doubt. It was a wonderful smile, and vanished slowly, leaving a rapt look; evidently he was lost in musing upon architecture and sculpture and beautiful books. A girl whisking by in an automobile had time to guess, reverently, that the phrase in his mind was: A Stately Home for Beautiful Books! Dinner-tables would hear, that evening, how Talbot Potter stood there, oblivious of everything else, studying the Library!

      This slight sketch of artistic reverie completed, he went on, proceeding a little more rapidly down the Avenue; presently turned over to the stage door of Wallack's, made his way through the ensuing passages, and appeared upon the vasty stage of the old theatre, where his company of actors awaited his coming to begin the rehearsal of a new play.

      Chapter 2

      First act, please, ladies and gentlemen!

      Thus spake, without emotion, Packer, the stage-manager; but out in the dusky auditorium, Stewart Canby, the new playwright, began to tremble. It was his first rehearsal.

      He and one other sat in the shadowy hollow of the orchestra, two obscure little shapes on the floor of the enormous cavern. The other was Talbot Potter's manager, Carson Tinker, a neat, grim, small old man with a definite appearance of having long ago learned that after a little while life will beat anybody's game, no matter how good. He observed the nervousness of the playwright, but without interest. He had seen too many.

      Young Canby's play was a study of egoism, being the portrait of a man wholly given over to selfish ambitions finally attained, but at the cost of every good thing in his life, including the loss of his honour, his lady-love, and the trust and affection of his friends. Young Canby had worked patiently at his manuscript, rewriting, condensing, pouring over it the sincere

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1