The four Corners abroad — A Closer Reading

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In Category - Wandering Heroes Classic Adventures

Authors: Blanchard, Amy Ella, 1856-1926, Smith, Wuanita, 1866-1959 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction; Europe -- Description and travel -- Juvenile fiction; Americans -- Europe -- Juvenile fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 81,615

Reading time 355 min

Text sections 10

The four Corners abroad — A Closer Reading can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 81,615 words, 5 hr 55 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 15.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Voyages and travels -- Juvenile fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #45026

In this 1909 travelogue, the Corner sisters and their friend Jo Keyes celebrate the Fourth of July in Paris, puzzle over a mysterious fellow boarder, and navigate European pensions. The excerpts show a lighthearted, dialogue-driven narrative focused on American identity abroad and everyday adventures rather than grand sightseeing.

Editorial Edition Score 4.9/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg45026

Read the Text

ack looked ruefully at the feet in which she had taken such pride.

"Mayn't I stripe my stockings, Nan?" asked Jean looking up from her task of mopping up the water.

"No, chickie, I think you'd better not."

"But Jack has such beautiful stripes," said Jean regretfully.

"I'll tell you what you can have," said Nan. "I've a lot of red ribbons and I'll wind your sweet little pipe-stems with those."

Jean was so pleased with this idea that she did not mind the aspersions cast upon her slim legs. "That will be lovely," she agreed, "and it will save the trouble of painting. I saw it was going to be crite hard to have exactly thirteen stripes and all the same width."

Nan picked up the sloppy looking color box. "I've got to make a little flag," she said, "and as soon as that is done I'll get the ribbons for you." She bore off the colors into the next room and proceeded hastily to make her flag, sticking a bit of the starred challis in one corner for the field. When it was completed she looked around for a proper staff, and finally settled on one of her paint brushes whose pointed handle served excellently well to stick in the centre of the cake.

Having put it in place, Nan stood off to see the effect. "It doesn't look quite right," she observed. "What is the matter with it, girls?"

"You've made thirteen red stripes instead of having thirteen in all, red and white included," Mary Lee told her. She was always an exact person.

"Dear me, that's just the thing," said Nan. "Why didn't I know enough to do it right?"

"Never mind," said Jo. "Nobody will notice it, and I am sure it looks very well. Isn't the table lovely? I wish they would come."

"Oh, but I don't," returned Nan. "I've yet to dike, and I promised Jean to wind her legs for her. They will look like barbers' poles, but she'll never think of that, so please don't any one suggest it. It is so late I'll have to fling on any red, white and blue doings I can find."

"I'll wind the legs," volunteered Jo. "I'm all ready as you see, and you've had the most to do."

"Good for you," responded Nan. "I'll get the ribbons."

"Don't you think," said Jo, "that we ought to have speeches or something?" Jo was always great at that sort of thing.

"It wouldn't be bad." Nan was quick to accept the suggestion. "You get up a speech, Jo. We'll sing Yankee Doodle and Dixie to comb accompaniments, and I'll recite that poem of Emerson's about the firing of the shot heard round the world. What will you do, Mary Lee?"

"I might give a cake-walk," she replied; "that would be truly American."

"Let's all do a cake-walk," Nan suggested. "We have the cake, you see, and you can dance a breakdown, Mary Lee, and sing a plantation song."

"The programme is rolling up splendidly," said Jo. "Go along, Nan, and get dressed. If you stand here talking the guests will be here before you are ready."

Nan rushed off and, in her usual direct and expeditious manner, soon had herself arrayed. Her blue skirt, white shirt-waist and red sash gave the foundation of her costume which was further enlivened by a red, white and blue cockade, made hastily of tissue-paper snatched out of various places. This she wore in her dark hair while she had put on a pair of red stockings with white shoes, the latter made resplendent by huge blue bows.

"Your get-up is fine," cried Jo, regarding her admiringly. "You always outdo every one else, Nan, and with the least fussing and the slightest amount of material. Here I've taken the trouble to put these white stars on a blue belt, and Mary Lee has basted all those stripes around her skirt, yet look at you with that dandy little cockade and those fetching blue bows which didn't take you five minutes to make."

"There they come," cried Mary Lee.

"Start the teakettle, somebody, while I go tell Miss Joyce. I hope she has not gone out." She rushed off leaving the others to begin the tea-making. On the way from Miss Joyce's room, where she fortunately found the young lady, Nan encountered Mrs. Corner and Miss Helen. "Happy Fourth of July," cried the girl. "Get your things off, please, and come right in to tea; it's all ready."

"Good child," answered Miss Helen. "We are ready for tea, for we are both tired out. There was so much red tape connected with this morning's business. We'll be right in, Nan."

"You didn't get wet?"

Continue Reading →

The Four Corners Abroad opens not with a grand tour but with a rainy Fourth of July in Passy, where the American girls realize they have forgotten their own national holiday. Nan Corner’s theatrical impulse to “paint myself red, white and blue” and cry “Give me liberty or give me death” from the window sets a tone of playful patriotism that runs through the excerpts. The narrative voice favors brisk dialogue over descriptive passages, and the girls’ banter—about Diabolo games, antique hunting, and a mysterious dark-eyed boarder—reveals character through conversation rather than introspection.

Patriotism as Performance

The Fourth of July chapter establishes the girls’ Americanness as something they perform for each other. Nan’s mock-heroic speech is immediately undercut by her sister Mary Lee’s literal-minded objection and the twins’ demand for actual face paint. This self-aware humor recurs when the girls later speculate about a fellow boarder’s nationality, only to learn she is “plain, dyed-in-the-wool, United States American, from Chelsea, Massachusetts.” The joke—that they had discussed private matters in front of someone who understood every word—prompts Mrs. Corner’s moral about caution abroad. The excerpts thus treat national identity as both a source of comedy and a practical concern.

The Pension as Microcosm

Much of the action in the excerpts takes place within the pension, where the girls observe and classify other guests. The mysterious boarder is described through a chain of guesses: Russian, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Austrian, Canadian French. Each guess is supported by flimsy evidence—a letter with an Italian stamp, dark eyes, silence at meals. Miss Helen’s eventual discovery that the woman is American from Massachusetts deflates the exoticism the girls had projected. This episode suggests that the narrative is less interested in foreign cultures than in the Americans’ own assumptions and social dynamics. The pension becomes a stage for their interactions with new friends like Juliet Hoyt and Maurice, who are quickly absorbed into their circle.

Dialogue-Driven Structure

The excerpts rely almost entirely on dialogue to advance the story. Narration is minimal; even setting details like the rain or the American flag are introduced through characters’ speech. The girls’ conversations are peppered with exclamations and rhetorical questions (“Goodness me!”, “What do you say we do, Jo?”), creating a rhythm that mimics real-time banter. When Jo spots the flag, she turns from the window to announce it, and the scene shifts to the group’s collective realization. This technique keeps the focus on interpersonal reactions rather than on the Parisian environment. Readers learn about the characters’ relationships—Nan’s teasing of Mary Lee, Jo’s easy camaraderie with Maurice—through what they say and how others respond.

Readers approaching The Four Corners Abroad should expect a story driven by conversation and mild social comedy rather than by plot or description. The excerpts give no indication of a central conflict or a journey itinerary; instead, the narrative lingers on the girls’ everyday decisions and misunderstandings. The catalog subjects—voyages and travels, European description—are present only as a backdrop. The real subject is the group’s internal dynamics and their self-conscious American identity.

Those Corner sisters, laughing through their Paris pensions, never once suspected how a ship could become a home, a nation, a heart’s anchor. Some quiet kinship lingers there—the same gentle grasp for belonging, though the sea takes a saltier toll. I often think of The Salving of the "Fusi Yama": A Post-War Story of the Sea — Reading Notes beside that travelogue, two old friends murmuring of shelter found in strange places.