A Hazard of New Fortunes — Volume 2
William Dean Howells's masterpiece of Gilded Age America follows the March family as they abandon their Boston roots for the commercial gamble of New York City. Basil March, a man of liberal conscience and modest means, takes a publishing job in the metropolis, dragging his wife Isabel into a world where money talks and old certainties dissolve. The novel dramatizes the collision between a self-made millionaire and a fiery social revolutionary, with Basil caught in the middle, desperately seeking fair ground that doesn't exist. Around them swirls the bohemian world of aspiring artists, the grinding poverty of the working class, and the brutal economics of a city that rewards ruthlessness. Howells renders fin-de-siècle New York with journalistic precision while tracing the slow erosion of progressive ideals when they meet hard reality. This is the American Dream disassembled: not a story of success or failure, but of the compromises and illusions that sustain it.
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X-Ray
“NoMarch felt the forces of fate closing about him and pushing him to a decision. He feebly fought them off till he could have another look at the flat. Then, baked and subdued still more by the unexpected presence of Mrs. Grosvenor Green herself, who was occupying it so as to be able to show it effectively, he took it. He was aware more than ever of its absurdities; he knew that his wife would never cease to hate it; but he had suffered one of those eclipses of the imagination to which men of his temperament are subject, and into which he could see no future for his desires. He felt a comfort in irretrievably committing himself, and exchanging the burden of indecision for the burden of responsibility.””
— William Dean Howells
“It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this. New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry.””
— William Dean Howells
“New York may be splendidly gay or squalidly gay but prince or pauper, it's gay always...Yes, gay is the word...but frantic. I can't get used to it. They forget death, Basil; they forget death in New York.””
— William Dean Howells
“She felt him more than life to her and knew him lost, and the frenzy, that makes a woman kill the man she loves, or fling vitriol to destroy the beauty she cannot have for all hers, possessed her lawless soul.””
— William Dean Howells
“What a noble thing life is, anyway! Here I am, well on the way to fifty, after twenty-five years of hard work, looking forward to the potential poor-house as confidently as I did in youth. We might have saved a little more than we have saved; but the little more wouldn't avail if I were turned out of my place now; and we should have lived sordidly to no purpose. Some one always has you by the throat, unless you have some one else in your grip. I wonder if that's the attitude the Almighty intended His respectable creatures to take toward one another! I wonder if He meant our civilization, the battle we fight in, the game we trick in! I wonder if He considers it final, and if the kingdom of heaven on earth, which we pray for”
— William Dean Howells
“He was walking over toward the West Side, aimlessly at first, and then at times with the longing to do something to save those mistaken men from themselves forming itself into a purpose. Was not that what she meant when she bewailed her woman's helplessness? She must have wished him to try if he, being a man, could not do something; or if she did not, still he would try, and if she heard of it she would recall what she had said and would be glad he had understood her so. Thinking of her pleasure in what he was going to do, he forgot almost what it was; but when he came to a street-car track he remembered it, and looked up and down to see if there were any turbulent gathering of men whom he might mingle with and help to keep from violence. He saw none anywhere; and then suddenly, as if at the same moment, for in his exalted mood all events had a dream-like simultaneity, he stood at the corner of an avenue, and in the middle of it, a little way off, was a street-car, and around the car a tumult of shouting, cursing, struggling men. The driver was lashing his horses forward, and a policeman was at their heads, with the conductor, pulling them; stones, clubs, brickbats hailed upon the car, the horses, the men trying to move them. The mob closed upon them in a body, and then a patrol-wagon whirled up from the other side, and a squad of policemen leaped out and began to club the rioters. Conrad could see how they struck them under the rims of their hats; the blows on their skulls sounded as if they had fallen on stone; the rioters ran in all directions.One of the officers rushed up toward the corner where Conrad stood, and then he saw at his side a tall, old man, with a long, white beard, who was calling out at the policemen: "Ah, yes! Glup the strikerss”
— William Dean Howells
“I'm glad you see that; and I'm glad you did it. You don't believe me, of course. Why do men think life can be only the one thing to women? And if you come to the selfish view, who are the happy women? I'm sure that if work doesn't fail me, health won't, and happiness won't.""But you could work on with me”
— William Dean Howells
“Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she merely said, "'Every Other Week' seems to be going on just the same as ever.""Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. Fulkerson," said Beaton, with a return to what they were saying, "has managed the whole business very well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice.""Very likely," Alma suggested, vaguely. "Or, no! Excuse me! He couldn't, he couldn't!" She laughed delightedly at Beaton's foolish look of embarrassment.He tried to recover his dignity in saying, "He's 'a very good fellow, and he deserves his happiness.""Oh, indeed!" said Alma, perversely. "Does any one deserve happiness?""I know I don't," sighed Beaton."You mean you don't get it.""I certainly don't get it.""Ah, but that isn't the reason.""What is?""That's the secret of the universe," She bit in her lower lip, and looked at him with eyes, of gleaming fun."Are you never serious?" he asked."With serious people always.""I am serious; and you have the secret of my happiness”
— William Dean Howells
“Alma said, "They seem to be greatly amused with something in there.""Me, probably," said Beaton. "I seem to amuse everybody to-night.""Don't you always?""I always amuse you, I'm afraid, Alma."She looked at him as if she were going to snub him openly for using her name; but apparently she decided to do it covertly. "You didn't at first. I really used to believe you could be serious, once.""Couldn't you believe it again? Now?""Not when you put on that wind-harp stop.""Wetmore has been talking to you about me. He would sacrifice his best friend to a phrase. He spends his time making them.""He's made some very pretty ones about you.""Like the one you just quoted?""No, not exactly. He admires you ever so much. He says" She stopped, teasingly."What?""He says you could be almost anything you wished, if you didn't wish to be everything.""That sounds more like the school of Wetmore. That's what you say, Alma. Well, if there were something you wished me to be, I could be it.""We might adapt Kingsley: 'Be good, sweet man, and let who will be clever.'" He could not help laughing. She went on: "I always thought that was the most patronizing and exasperating thing ever addressed to a human girl; and we've had to stand a good deal in our time. I should like to have it applied to the other 'sect' a while. As if any girl that was a girl would be good if she had the remotest chance of being clever.""Then you wouldn't wish me to be good?" Beaton asked."Not if you were a girl.""You want to shock me. Well, I suppose I deserve it. But if I were one-tenth part as good as you are, Alma, I should have a lighter heart than I have now. I know that I'm fickle, but I'm not false, as you think I am.""Who said I thought you were false?""No one," said Beaton. "It isn't necessary, when you look it”
— William Dean Howells
