The Gilded Years Read Online Free

cluttering up the room like this, because dust gathers or some nonsense, and they’re worried we’ll burn the whole place down when it falls into the oil lamps, but I don’t care. I am not living in bland quarters. My mind won’t expand. And for me to keep up here, my mind needs a lot of expanding.”
    “I like what you’ve done with it so far. It’s much morestriking than my parlor room last year,” her roommate said. Their room looked like a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot advertisement for luxury travel to the Orient.
    Lottie let the fabric drop and admired her work.
    “Well, as I said, I am besotted with Japan at the moment. I traveled to Tokyo and Kyoto in July and August with father, and it was majestic. I can’t even begin to describe the people. So slight, so diminutive and elegant. They walk on wooden shoes, can you imagine? And they wear long silk kimonos and the food is beautifully presented. Plus the fish! You haven’t eaten a fish until you’ve eaten a raw Japanese fish. I know it sounds dreadful, but it’s just the opposite. And then of course there is the actual art. The paintings and calligraphy, the woodblock prints. My father bought an original Hokusai, whose work is causing a sensation in Paris. His name will make it to America soon. We’re behind, of course. Isn’t that always the case? I tried to bring the print here, but you can guess how that conversation terminated. I’m going to sail to Japan again after graduation. Father promised me I could, as long as I’m chaperoned. I want to go all over the Orient. You should accompany me. We’d have a magnificent time.”
    Anita knew that within days of graduation, she would have a sensible teaching job or a scholarship to another school. And not one across the Pacific Ocean.
    “It sounds splendid,” Anita said noncommittally, diverting the conversation from any future plans.
    “I am so taken with Orientals,” said Lottie. “They have the most marvelous features.” She picked up the hammer and headed to the wall above the ornate lacquer tea table, delivered from overseas just that morning.
    “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, after she had already put the first hole in the plaster.
    “Not at all,” Anita answered honestly.
    “I told father that I was going to marry the future emperor of Japan, Crown Prince Yoshihito,” she said with her back turned and a nail between her teeth again. “And he said he would shoot me first. He meant it, too. He has several guns and a terrible temper.” She spat out the nail so she could be better heard. “It’s not like I said I was going to run off with a despondent railroad worker with an opium pipe. A sensitive man, my father, but a real modern person despite it all. I forgave him because he’s originally from Pittsburgh, and people from Pittsburgh are natural brutes. It’s a good thing my mother was born in New York or I would be an absolute lost cause and never get invited anywhere of note. Mrs. Astor has a real disdain for people from Pittsburgh.”
    She looked around the room again and jumped onto the small green velvet couch.
    “Come, Anita, let’s tack this all up to the walls and make this room look like a palace.” She grabbed her roommate by the hand and handed her a small nail and the hammer she had been using. “You try this. I’ll wield my Latin dictionary. It will have the most use it’s had in years. Just be mindful of the noise because if Mervis hears us, we’re sure to get fined.”
    “Fined?” Anita asked, crossing to the opposite wall.
    “It’s worth it, don’t you think? I was fined at the start of every semester last year, but we can’t be expected to live in some desolate chamber. How will we learn anything? You should have seen my parlor as a freshman. That was the year I was absolutely taken with the French Revolution. This year’s décor will be decidedly cheaper, as the Japanese really do have a simpler aesthetic. Plus, if my father doesn’t receive