In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet. And everybody knew everybody else’s family horse and carriage. The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, the car would halt at once and wait for her while she shut the window, put on her hat and coat, went downstairs, found an umbrella, told the girl what to have for dinner and came forth from the house. Too slow for us nowadays. Because the faster we’re carried, the less time we have to spare. During the earlier years of this period, while bangs and bustles were having their way with women, there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that rigid, tall, silk thing known to impudence as a stovepipe. But the long contaigion of the derby had arrived. One season the crown of this hat would be a bucket, the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its bootjack, but hightop boots gave way to shoes and congress gouters. And these were played through fashions that shaped them now with toes like box ends and now with toes like the prows of racing shells. Trousers with a crease were considered plebian. The crease proved that the garment had lain upon a shelf and hence was ready-made. With evening dress, a gentleman wore a tan overcoat, so short that his black coattails hung visible five inches below the overcoat. But after a season or two, he lengthened his overcoat till it touched his heels and he passed out of his tight trousers into trousers like great bags. In those days, they had time for everything – time for sleigh rides and balls and assemblies and cotillions and open house on New Year’s and all-day picnics in the woods and even that prettiest of all vanished customs – the serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under a pretty girl’s window and flute, harp and fiddle, cello, coronet and bass viol would presently release their melodies to t
Most girls are usually pretty fresh. They ought to go to a man’s college for about a year. They’d get taught a few things about freshness.
Nobody has a good name and a bad mouth.
Took a bit too much to drink the other night right out here and stepped clean through the bass fiddle serenading her.
Well, Wilbur may not be any Apollo, as it were, but he’s a steady young businessman.
Page Topic: Movie Quotes from ‘Magnificent Ambersons, The’: Quotes from the movie ‘Magnificent Ambersons, The’
