FullReads

“Thank you! I will begin at once if you will kindly give me a list of such as would be good for me,” cried Eva, with the sweet docility of one eager to be all that is lovable and wise in woman.

“Give us a list, and we will try to improve in the best way. You know what we need, and love to help foolish girls, or you wouldn’t be so kind and patient with us,” said Alice, going to sit beside Carrie, hoping for much discussion of this, to her, very interesting subject.

“I will, with pleasure; but I read few modern novels, so I may not be a good judge there. Most of them seem very poor stuff, and I cannot waste time even to skim them as some people do. I still like the old-fashioned ones I read as a girl, though you would laugh at them. Did any of you ever read ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw’?”

“I have, and thought it very funny; so were ‘Evelina’ and ‘Cecilia.’ I wanted to try Smollett and Fielding, after reading some fine essays about them, but Papa told me I must wait,” said Alice.

“Ah, my dears, in my day, Thaddeus was our hero, and we thought the scene where he and Miss Beaufort are in the Park a most thrilling one. Two fops ask Thaddeus where he got his boots, and he replies, with withering dignity, ‘Where I got my sword, gentlemen.’ I treasured the picture of that episode for a long time. Thaddeus wears a hat as full of black plumes as a hearse, Hessian boots with tassels, and leans over Mary, who languishes on the seat in a short- waisted gown, limp scarf, poke bonnet, and large bag,–the height of elegance then, but very funny now. Then William Wallace in ‘Scottish Chiefs.’ Bless me! we cried over him as much as you do over your ‘Heir of Clifton,’ or whatever the boy’s name is. You wouldn’t get through it, I fancy; and as for poor, dear, prosy Richardson, his letter-writing heroines would bore you to death. Just imagine a lover saying to a friend, ‘I begged my angel to stay and sip one dish of tea. She sipped one dish and flew.'”

“Now, I’m sure that’s sillier than anything the Duchess ever wrote with her five-o’clock teas and flirtations over plum-cake on lawns,” cried Carrie, as they all laughed at the immortal Lovelace.

“I never read Richardson, but he couldn’t be duller than Henry James, with his everlasting stories, full of people who talk a great deal and amount to nothing. I like the older novels best, and enjoy some of Scott’s and Miss Edgeworth’s better than Howells’s, or any of the modern realistic writers, with their elevators, and paint-pots, and every-day people,” said Alice, who wasted little time on light literature.

“I’m glad to hear you say so, for I have an old-fashioned fancy that I’d rather read about people as they were, for that is history, or as they might and should be, for that helps us in our own efforts; not as they are, for that we know, and are all sufficiently commonplace ourselves, to be the better for a nobler and wider view of life and men than any we are apt to get, so busy are we earning daily bread, or running after fortune, honor or some other bubble. But I mustn’t lecture, or I shall bore you, and forget that I am your hostess, whose duty it is to amuse.”

As Mrs. Warburton paused, Carrie, anxious to change the subject, said, with her eyes on a curious jewel which the old lady wore, “I also like true stories, and you promised to tell us about that lovely pin some day. This is just the time for it,–please do.”

“With pleasure, for the little romance is quite apropos to our present chat. It is a very simple tale, and rather sad, but it had a great influence on my life, and this brooch is very dear to me.”