Phil

“She had been invited to dinners and luncheons and dances, but their doings, she told Dirk, had bored her.

“They’re nice,” she said, “but they don’t have much fun. They’re all trying to be something they’re not. And that’s such hard work. The women were always explaining that they lived in Chicago because their husband’s business was here. They all do things pretty well — dance or paint or ride or write or sing — but not well enough. They’re professional amateurs, trying to express something they don’t feel; or that they don’t feel strongly enough to make it worth while expressing.”
― Edna Ferber, So Big

“Sweat and blood and health and youth go into every cabbage. Did you know that, Julie? One doesn't despise them as food, knowing that.”
― Edna Ferber, So Big

“She faced him, sitting up very straight in bed, the little wool shawl hunched about her shoulders. “Dirk, are you ever going back to architecture? The war is history, it’s now or never with you. Pretty soon it will be too late. Are you ever going back to architecture? To your profession?

A clean amputation. “No, Mother.”

She gave an actual gasp, as though icy water had been thrown full in her face. She looked suddenly old, tired. Her shoulders sagged. He stood in the doorway, braced for her reproaches. But when she spoke it was to reproach herself. “Then I’m a failure.”

“Oh, what nonsense, Mother. I’m happy. You can’t live somebody else’s life. You used to tell me, when I was a kid I remember, that life wasn’t just an adventure, to be taken as it came, with the hope that something glorious was hidden just around the corner. You said you had lived that way and it hadn’t worked. You said ——”

She interrupted him with a little cry. “I know I did. I know I did.” Suddenly she raised a warning finger. Her eyes were luminous, prophetic. “Dirk, you can’t desert her like that!”

“Desert who?” He was startled.

“Beauty! Self-expression. Whatever you want to call it. You wait! She’ll turn on you some day. Some day you’ll want her, and she won’t be there.”
― Edna Ferber, So Big

“Where are you going this hot day, Mis’ DeJong?”

Selina sat up very straight. “To Bagdad, Mrs. Pool.”

“To — Where’s that? What for?”

“To sell my jewels, Mrs. Pool. And to see Aladdin, and Harun-al-Rashid and Ali Baba. And the Forty Thieves.”

Mrs. Pool had left her rocker and had come down the steps. The wagon creaked on past her gate. She took a step or two down the path, and called after them. “I never heard of it. Bag — How do you get there?”

Over her shoulder Selina called out from the wagon seat. “You just go until you come to a closed door. And you say ‘Open Sesame!’ and there you are.”

Bewilderment shadowed Mrs. Pool’s placid face. As the wagon lurched on down the road it was Selina who was smiling and Mrs. Pool who was serious.

The boy, round eyed, was looking up at his mother. “That’s out of Arabian Nights, what you said. Why did you say that?” Suddenly excitement tinged his voice. “That’s out of the book. Isn’t it? Isn’t it! We’re not really ——”

She was a little contrite, but not very. “Well, not really, perhaps. But ’most any place is Bagdad if you don’t know what will happen in it. And this is an adventure, isn’t it, that we’re going on? People in disguise in the Haymarket. Caliphs, and princes, and slaves, and thieves, and good fairies, and witches.”

“In the Haymarket! That Pop went to all the time! That is just dumb talk.”
― Edna Ferber, So Big