Chapter 17

Five minutes later, Tom Thurston entered, and Julia Monson came
down to receive HIM, her pique not interfering, and it being rather
stylish to be disengaged on the morning of the day when the household
was in all the confusion of a premeditated rout.

{premeditated rout = planned party}

"This is SO good of you, Miss Monson," said Tom, as he made his
bow--I heard it all, being still on the sofa--"This is SO good of you,
when your time must have so many demands on it."

"Not in the least, Mr. Thurston--mamma and the housekeeper have
settled every thing, and I am really pleased to see you, as you can give
me the history of the new play--"

"Ah! Miss Monson, my heart--my faculties--my ideas--" Tom was
getting bothered, and he made a desperate effort to extricate himself--
"In short, my JUDGMENT is so confused and monopolized, that I have
no powers left to think or speak of plays. In a word, I was not there."

"That explains it, then--and what has thus confused your mind, Mr.
Thurston?"

"The approach of this awful night. You will be surrounded by a host of
admirers, pouring into your ears their admiration and love, and then
what shall I have to support me, but that 'yes,' with which you once
raised me from the depths of despair to an elevation of happiness that
was high as the highest pinnacle of the caverns of Kentucky; raising me
from the depths of Chimborazo."

{caverns of Kentucky = Mammoth Cave; Chimborazo = a 20,500 foot
volcano in Ecuador}

Tom meant to reverse this image, but love is proverbially desperate in
its figures of speech, and any thing was better than appearing to
hesitate. Nevertheless, Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had
too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of diction
and poetry.

"I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you," she said.
"Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of Kentucky so
strikingly elevated."

"Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring 'yes,' loveliest of
human females," continued Tom, kneeling with some caution, lest the
straps of his pantaloons should give way--"Impute all to your own lucid
ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience. Repeat that
'yes,' lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me from the thrill
of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human acmes."

"Hang it," thought Tom, "if she stand THAT, I shall presently be ashore.
Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer."

But Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the
admiration of no