THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

By Booth Tarkington



Chapter I


Major Amberson had "made a fortune" in 1873, when other people were
losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then.
Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as
even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt
New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and
place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their
Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost
during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a
Newfoundland dog.

In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet
knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a
new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see it go
by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs
on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the
trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on summer
evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time
rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family
horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down
the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a
reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or