Status Updates From The Custom of the Country

But his marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without it but merely the blind confidence that it will somehow be provided.

society was really just like the houses it lived in: a muddle of misapplied ornament over a thin steel shell of utility. The steel shell was built up in Wall Street, the social trimmings were hastily added in Fifth Ave; and the union between them was as monstrous and factitious, . . . unlike the gradual homogeneous growth which flowers into what other countries know as society

'... but he could not conceive that tenderness and desire could ever again be one for him: such a notion as that seemed part of the monstrous sentimental muddle on which his life had gone aground."

All was blurred and puzzling to the girl in this world of half-lights, half-tones, eliminations and abbreviations; and she felt a violent longing to brush away the cobwebs and assert herself as the dominant figure of the scene.

"It was bad enough to have no motor of her own, to be avowedly dependent on 'lifts,' openly and unconcealably in quest of them, and perpetually plotting to provoke their offer [...]" wow the eternal struggle. I get it

"Undine Spragg" ideal protagonist name