Pleasuredom

He looked at the card twice; and was ashamed to think that he was actually tempted to stick it on the chimney-piece; but he thought how contemptible this would be, and even took the trouble to throw it into the fire. And now what cheer? A small note and a woman's hand-writing—more palpitations of the heart! Better by far live in the wilderness, beware of pleasuredom, and seek a "world of glass." But dry wood will burn. What another of the elect! Even so, poor daughter of sin and shame! She once had reigned as queen of hearts. What filthy kennels the clearest streams are sometimes turned to!

Alice's small room was a bewildering picture of girlish vanities and pretty disorder. A pale blue brocade, which contrasted well with her fair skin and heavy yellow hair, occupied the bed; a mountain of fresh white garments, tucked and fluted, were thrown over a chair, like foam tossed up by a playful sea; jewelry, laces, and numberless pretty toilet articles covered the dresser, while the daintiest of slippers reposed on another chair, as if resting before a long march into pleasuredom. Mandy was in attendance and performed her duties very quietly and unobtrusively for a common colored girl, Alice thought. She did not know that she was too much accustomed to assisting at Queenie Gray's pretty toilets to lose her head or even to be surprised over anything of the kind, and that she was at that moment comparing the two girls, in her homely mind, to the no small disadvantage of the beautiful society belle.

But (and there is often a but to mar or unmake), our chimney-jack had a weakness, a deep-seated, life-long weakness. As a boy-sweep his earthly paradise had been those tinselled halls of song and dance, and his angels the painted and questionable ladies who there swung about their swivelled limbs almost to the point of detachment. To his receptive mind the place and its denizens were the acme of high life and pleasuredom. These sentiments prevailed throughout his life; perhaps not to the very close of it. However, chimney-jacking was but a means to an end, after all. He was already living in a castle with its clock-towers and embattlements and coat-of-arms, but without portcullis or barbican.

Fellow members of the Bohemian Club, august sanctuary of San Francisco tradition, most of them shared a mellow view of architecture and were damned if they would kill themselves advancing the modern cause in new materials and organic form. New York City's 1939 Fair already had a lien on the World of Tomorrow, Chairman Kelham and crew therefore plumped for a pleasuredom on "Treasure Island," an imaginative, quasi-Oriental 'Never-Never-Land'. Conceivably, nothing could have been worse. Fortunately, the Fair architects had taste in using their natural site […]