03108cam a22003613u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003704000110007804100170008905000070010610000340011324000260014724500170017326400510019030000470024133600260028833700260031433800360034050000310037650502620040750802210066952015110089053400610240165300500246265300570251270000480256985600670261785600430268499900190272777764UtSlPG20260610134812.0mcr n260607r20261896utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  aUtSlPG 7aen2iso639-1 4aPT1 aNordau, Max Simon,d1849-192310aSeifenblasen. English10aSoap bubbles 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2026  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier  aRelease date is 2026-01-240 aCant and humbug -- Wife versus native land -- Ali Hadji Effendi -- The cross at the corner -- The altar painting -- A Christmas eve in Paris -- The stepmother -- Pas de chance (No chance) -- How the fox hunter fared in England -- Within an inch of eternity.  aJeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net/ for Project Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)  a"Soap bubbles" by Max Simon Nordau is a collection of short stories written in the late 19th century. The pieces blend satire, travel-inflected sketches, and tender moral reflections, moving from comic cultural clashes to poignant meditations on faith, love, patriotism, and grief. Expect cosmopolitan settings, swift anecdotal setups, and humane, reflective endings.

The opening of the collection moves briskly across vignettes: a train-car exchange in “Cant and Humbug” pits Americans and an aloof Englishman against each other through dueling “true” anecdotes about national foibles; a salon debate in “Wife versus Native Land” leads to an Italian woman’s tale showing patriotism outmuscling romantic love. “Memories of Hungary” offers three sketches—a gentle portrait of Ali Hadji Effendi, a Persian dervish-poet peddler in Pest; the removal of a shabby street crucifix seen through the grief of an old woman; and the backstory of a luminous altar painting tied to a tragic, unspoken love. “A Christmas Eve in Paris” turns stark and intimate, as a father under siege burns last year’s Christmas tree to brew lifesaving tea for his feverish child. An essay-letter, “The Stepmother,” defends stepmothers against cruel stereotypes with clear-eyed empathy. The section closes by descending into the damp, gas-lit dissecting rooms of the Hôtel Dieu in “Pas de Chance!,” setting a grim, clinical stage for the tale to follow. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  pOriginally published:cNew York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1896  aAustrian fiction -- Translations into English  aShort stories, Austrian -- Translations into English1 aSafford, Mary J.q(Mary Joanna),d1842-19164 uhttps://archive.org/details/soapbubbles00nord/page/n5/mode/2up40uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77764  c118484d118484