Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt:... given this season, when one of the most charming and accomplished of the Frankfort ladies was told d brwflle pourpoint of the sudden death that very morning of a person to whom she was greatly attached. It was a sad and simple tale. Wedded to a harsh, unintellectual husband with whom she could have but little sympathy, she had met, not long before, a man of refined tastes and great position who fully understood and appreciated her. Their friendship--for it was nothing more--had aroused the husband's suspicions, and in his unreasoning anger he had forbidden its continuance. They had resigned themselves to this harsh decision, and, for a time, her friend had left Frankfort and gone far away, when a terrible, wasting disease MOCKING MIRTH 1 7 7 seizing upon him, which the doctors had told him must be fatal in a very short time, he had returned to pass in her neighbourhood the last few weeks left to him. They met at rare intervals, and then only in general society, where in some corner--" Low on the border of a couch they sat Stammering and staring: it was their last hour A madness of farewells..." The end had been fearfully sudden, for, early that very morning, the servant going into his room had found him stretched lifeless on the floor. We had all heard of the event almost immediately, the news spreading at once through the town. Yet she herself had been kept in complete ignorance of it (purposely one cannot but think) and allowed to go to this ball, where, in the midst of flowers, dancemusic, and mocking mirth, the fatal news had come upon her without a single note of preparation, blurted out in her hearing by some senseless creature. Fortunately, a friendly hand was ready to support her and lead her out of the room, or...