University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
TRISTRAM TREVANION GETS REVIEWED, AND MISS GILBERT GETS
DISGUSTED.

When Fanny Gilbert fully realized that she was
about to appear before the world as an authoress, the
hours were many in which her heart sank within her.
When the path to publicity was difficult or doubtful,
the goal was crowned with a golden glory. Now that
it had become easy and certain, clouds came dubiously
down and filled her with fear. She had been at work
for fame: what if, instead of fame, she should only win
disgrace? What if she should fail to arrest the attention
of the world for a moment, and her book should
be carelessly kicked into oblivion? Through her conversations
with Mary Hammett, she had learned that
the world really owed her nothing. She had not written
her book from love of the world, or a desire to
benefit the world. She was conscious that there was
nothing in her motives, or her intentions, upon which
she could establish a claim to the world's charitable
judgments. She had selfishly labored all winter for
the sole purpose of gathering a harvest of praise, and

she knew that if she should fail to reap according to her
hope, her labor would be lost without recourse. She
could not fall back upon her motives and her aims for
consolation, nor could she look forward to another generation
for appreciation and vindication.

Many times did Miss Gilbert wish that she could be
like the careless girls who called upon her—content
with the little life they were living. She despised their
devotion to dress, and their delight with trifles. She
scorned the petty gossip of beaux and belles that busied
their tongues; but she doubted whether she were as
really happy as they; and sometimes she shrank from
the gulf of active life and wearying thought into which
she was plunging. She trembled when she thought that
she was entering upon a life from which she could never
retreat—that never in this world or the next could she
be satisfied with the simple fact of being. She looked
on, on, on; and there rose before her no high table-land
of rest. The laborer passed her window, his hoe upon
his shoulder, returning from his work in the fields.
She watched him as he approached his dwelling, saw
the little ones run out to welcome him, and the humble
wife smiling at the door, and felt that in his insignificant
life and unambitious aims there was indeed a charm
worth sighing for—a charm which she was painfully
conscious that she could not even choose to endow her
own life with. She had burst the shell that enclosed
the world around her, and had caught glimpses of the
stars above her, and the great ocean of life that stretched
around; and while she looked, her wings had grown,
and she could never enter the shell again. Like thousands
who lived before her, and millions that will come

after her, for the first time conscious of the same condition,
she sighed “Alas!” and turned to her work.

As nothing particularly worthy of note occurred at
Crampton or the Run during the summer, among the
other characters engaged in our story, there will be
abundant opportunity to tell of Fanny Gilbert's work,
and its results. It will be remembered that Mr. Frank
Sargent had recommended certain changes to be made
in her novel. She had given the subject a good deal of
thought, and had finally concluded to act upon Mary
Hammett's suggestion—to marry Grace Beaumont to
Tristram Trevanion, in order that the public demand for
poetic justice should be satisfied, and, further to compass
the same end, to secure the violent death of the
Jewish dwarf at the hand of her hero. Further than
this she would not go. The title of her novel should
remain as it was—“Tristram Trevanion, or the Hounds
of the Whippoorwill Hills,” forever!

As she knew her manuscript by rote, it was not
necessary for her to procure its return from the publisher,
in order to make the proposed changes. So, in
the charming sovereignty of authorship, she coolly sat
down, and decreed and executed the marriage and the
murder. Not only this, but she dressed the bride in
exquisite array, and crowned her with orange blossoms,
and made a great feast, and (shall it be said?) created a
family of beautiful children, who filled the hearts of
their parents with unalloyed happiness through a very
long term of years, and brought honor to the already
glorious name of Trevanion. The dwarf died as he had
lived—a miscreant; but in his last moments he confessed
the justice of his doom, in that he had been the

author of various murders in his vicinity, which had
hitherto been shrouded in mystery. In consequence of
this fact, Trevanion was able to escape all regrets for
his violence, and complacently to regard himself as an
instrument in the hands of Providence for punishing the
guilty.

These alterations having been carefully executed,
they were inclosed by mail to the publisher, and Fanny
subsided into thoughtful inactivity, to wait for further
developments. She did not wait long. At the end of
two weeks she received a few sheets of proof—hardly
more than specimen pages—to show her how the work
would look, but enough to excite her, and bring to her
a fresh instalment of dreams of the future. Ah! the first
bliss of being in type! Nothing, in the most triumphant
career of authorship, equals the exultant happiness
of that precious moment. No event, but the morning
of the resurrection, can bring a repetition of that emotion
that pervades the soul when one's corruptible manuscript
first puts on incorruptible letter-press, and the
loose, uncertain mortality of running-hand rises into the
immortality of print. Fanny Gilbert's age and temperament
were abundantly susceptible to this charming
experience, and she enjoyed it keenly. She shut herself
into her room, and read, and re-read, the charming
pages. She saw that the book was going to be a new
one to her. The thoughts were crowded nearer together;
their relations became more apparent to herself.
She carried them to Mary Hammett, and the two
young women read them in company. Dr. Gilbert
read them; Aunt Catharine read them; and even little
Fred was allowed to share in his sister's happiness.

It was well that the young authoress should be happy
for her little moment. It was well that the world
should be transfigured in the light of her new emotions.
June, the month of roses, was at flood-tide. As Fanny
sat at her window dreaming, she saw the green sea of
foliage tossing in billowy unrest, and sparkling with
myriad flowers, and foaming in the beds of its uneasy
abysses with sheeted bloom. Out upon that beautiful
sea all her sensibilities pushed their sails, to dance and
float and fly, under the light of the great, slumbrous
sun. What rare sea-birds were those that plied their
ceaseless wings and sang their marvellous songs among
the waves!—orioles, like coals of fire, plunging in, and
coming out unquenched; automatic humming-birds,
stopping here and there, and sipping and sliding away
with a whirr, as if revolving upon, and following, an invisible
wire; chimney swallows paying out from imperceptible
reels broad nets of music to catch flies with;
bobolinks, diving into the swaying masses of green, and
coming out with a thousand tough bubbles bursting in
their metallic throats; broad-winged hawks, slowly
sailing above all, far up in the breathless ether, ripening
their feathery silver in the sun, and watching the play
beneath! And then what musical spray of insect-life
swept through the balmy atmosphere!—bees sprinkling
themselves upon the fresh blush-roses at the door, or
humming by, loaded with plunder; flies industriously
doing nothing; whole generations of motes sliding up
and down shadow-piercing sunbeams! Into this beautiful
scene, and half-creating it, went Fanny's happy
fancy, dreaming, and dreaming, and dreaming, through
hours of intoxication.

The proofs came in slowly. There was evidently
no haste on the part of the publisher in completing the
volume. In fact, he had informed the young authoress
that he only aimed to have it in readiness for the fall
trade. The time, however, seemed very long; for
Fanny could do nothing while the grand event of her
life was in expectation. She had done her work, and
had no heart for further enterprise until she had received
payment for the past. Miss Hammett, too,
seemed to be quite as much interested in the receipt of
the proofs as if the book were her own, for with each
instalment there invariably came a good-natured, sportive
letter from the publisher, which she was in the
habit of borrowing and reading at her leisure.

The weary summer wore away at last, and September
brought the long-wished-for volume, and in its company
a most disgusting disappointment. Instead of
the massive book which the massive manuscript and the
multiplied proofs had prophesied, it was a dwarfed
little volume, that indicated equal scarcity of brains and
paper. The typographical aspect of the book showed
that the printer had spread out into the largest space an
incompetent mass of material, and had failed, at last, to
make any thing of pretentious magnitude. Poor Fanny
looked over the books in her father's library, saw what
other brains had done, and was driven into self-contempt—almost
into despair. “Tristram Trevanion”
made no show in the world at all! Why, it was no
bigger than a Sunday-school book; and it seemed to
the writer so unaccountable that anybody could ever
have spent as much time on a Sunday-school book as
she had spent on that! What possible object could

they have had! How could they have lived through
it!

After all the dreams of the summer came a great
reaction. The book was born, but it was a very insignificant
child indeed, and was made quite ridiculous by
the disproportion between its swollen and sonorous
name and its gross weight. She conceived a new respect
for the gentleman who had suggested “Shucks”
as a fitting title, and wondered that he had been so generous
as even to think of “Rhododendron.” She laid
it down upon the table, and looked at it with other
books, and even went so far as to wonder whether, if it
should secure the praise of the public, she should not be
so much disgusted with the public for praising it, that
the praise would lose its value.

Poor child!—for she was but a child—she had not
learned that an achievement, to him who achieves, is
dead—that it is only a block upon which he stands, that
he may wreathe crowns about the brows of higher
deeds. She had not learned that to each great effort of
a soul which God has informed with genius there comes
an influx of new power, advancing its possibilities so far,
that all it has done becomes contemptible to itself.
She had not learned that the more genius glories in the
results of its labor, the more does it show itself impoverished
by its labor, and the more does it demonstrate
the shallowness of its resources and the weakness
of its vitality.

But the book was out. What should be its fate?
Dr. Gilbert had his own opinion of the volume, and
some very well-founded apprehensions of its destiny.
Since its enthusiastic reception by the pastor and his

wife, he had thought about it a great deal more than he
had ever done before. The reflections to which his visit
to New York had given rise, had carried him into a
juster estimate of his daughter's powers as a writer, and
the world's needs and demands, than he had entertained
before. In truth, the relations of his daughter's life to
the life of the great world, had come to look to him very
like the relations of Crampton to the great world of
production and trade. But he had an interest in the
book which Fanny had not. He had agreed to share
the loss on its publication in case that publication
should be a failure. He was pledged to all proper and
practicable efforts, therefore, for its financial success.

A small package of the books had been sent to him
for distribution among the local press. He made an
errand to Littleton, and left a copy with the editor of
the Littleton Examiner. He sent a copy by mail to
the editor of the Londonderry Gazette, and another to
the North Yerrington Courier. More distant members
of the great newspaper fraternity were equally favored.
Fanny was aware of these operations, and gradually
came out of the condition of half-indifferent disgust into
which the completed volume had thrown her, into one
of painful anxiety. Now that public condemnation or
public approval was imminent, her fears quite outweighed
her hopes, and she could hardly sleep during the
period that she awaited the decision of the local presses
to which so peculiarly her fate had been committed.
The Littleton Examiner had pretensions to literary
character very much in advance of its neighbors. Rev.
J. Desilver Newman, a young clergyman not altogether
unknown in these pages, was supposed to have some

mysterious connection with this press. The editor himself
was a profound theorist, and delighted more in
speculation than in matters of fact. It was very difficult,
indeed, to obtain the news from his sheet, except
in an incidental manner, for the events of the world
were so accustomed to suggest new trains of thought,
and to keep him busy among philosophical causes, that
he had all he could do to present what he delighted to
call “the rationale of current life.”

The position of the Littleton Examiner was considered
by the press of the region very enviable. That
sheet was, in fact, quite the standard. All waited, before
expressing an opinion, to see what the Examiner
said. On some subjects they always took the liberty
“to differ with brother Highway of the Littleton Examiner,”
simply because, in all matters of politics and
religion, it was expected of them by their subscribers
that they should differ with brother Highway. In literary
matters, however, it was always delightful for them
to add their humble testimony to that of brother Highway,
in favor or in condemnation of any man, scheme,
or opinion that might be under discussion. Besides, it
was an easy way of making a paragraph to say, “We
do not agree with brother Highway of the Examiner,
when he says that,” &c., &c., quoting brother Highway's
paragraph without the disfiguration of quotation marks;
or to say, “Though differing with brother Highway of
the Examiner, on a wide range of subjects discussed in
these pages, it always gives us pleasure, when we can
do it conscientiously, to bestow upon his sentiments our
cordial approval, as we do when he remarks that,” &c.,
&c., quoting a whole article, and leaving out the quotation

marks, of course. In this way, brother Highway
was flattered and kept good-natured, and his “valued
contemporaries,” using his brains and words to fill their
pages with, nursed their self-complacency by a dignified
censorship of all brother Highway's utterances. So
brother Highway wrote paragraphs and leaders and disquisitions
for all of them, and all they had to do was,
in editorial sovereignty, to approve of, or dissent from,
brother Highway.

The Littleton Examiner came at last—wet and
doubtfully fragrant from the press—and was received
from the hand of the weekly post-rider by Fanny herself.
She took it privately to her room to read it alone
—her heart throbbing violently with apprehension.
She opened the important sheet, and read, first, a long
advertisement of the “Matchless Sanative,” and, as if
this were a fitting preparation for the catalogue of
deaths, she then went through the mortuary record of
the week. She had, of course, no interest in these
things. The notice of her book was the first article that
arrested her eye when she opened the paper, but she
was not ready for it. Her eye ran around it, and then
ran away—came up to it, and dodged—descended upon
it like a bird upon a pool, and sprang up again, frightened
at sight of its own feathers. At length, by a sort
of spiritual endosmosis, the character and quality of the
critique made its way into her consciousness, and she
came gradually to its literal persual.

Now brother Highway of the Littleton Examiner,
never noticed a book, at any length, without giving his
theory of the class of books to which the one in hand
belonged. After his theory had had exposition, it mattered

very little what was said about the book—in fact,
it mattered very little whether he had read the book at
all. He threw out his theory as that by which the
book was to stand or fall; and was often so considerate
as to let the public decide whether it could abide the
test of the theory or not. In this case, he had sacrificed
an unusually extended space to the review, five-sixths of
which were devoted to an exposition of his theory of
novel-writing, and one-sixth to the book itself. The
single paragraph on “Tristram Trevanion” seemed to
be written to prove that the author recognized the Examiner's
theory, and had constructed the book with sole
reference to it. Fanny's quick insight immediately detected
the fact that the editor had not read her book at
all—or, rather, that he had done no more than to dip
here and there into its pages. The degree of disgust
with which she read the following paragraph relating to
her volume, can be imagined:

“`Tristram Trevanion,' tried by this test, and made
to confront these great fundamental and eternal principles,
betrays the ring of the genuine metal. The style
of the writer is sparkling without being intense, flowing
without looseness, and pure as the mountain brook
without the stones and rocks and abysses which obstruct
its flow, and throw its bounding waters into inextricable
confusion. As we wade with heart absorbed,
through its pellucid pages, in fancy's quickened ear we
can hear the baying of the hounds upon the Whippoorwill
Hills, the distant winding of the horn of the gallant
Trevanion, the frenzied shriek of the perjured Jew, and
all the varied music of that great song of life whose
notes fall so forcibly upon the appreciative ear. The

book is, of course, written by a woman. No man, living
or dead, could have dressed Grace Beaumont for
her nuptials with Trevanion with such precision and
propriety, and we may add, with such gorgeous simplicity,
if we may be allowed to use so suggestive a
solecism. The writer, if we mistake not, is not altogether
unknown in Littleton. We would not invade
the secret of the musical masculine pseudonym she has
assumed; but in its revelation, if it shall ever be unfolded,
we are much mistaken if it is not found to invade
the precincts of our stirring little neighbor, Crampton.
The book cannot fail to have a million readers,
who, we are certain, will bear us out in the assertion
that this first offspring of the fair writer's muse, must
introduce her to a career which will satisfy her most
daring ambition.”

“And this is the stuff that public praise is made
of!” exclaimed Miss Gilbert, as the Littleton Examiner
fell from her hands to the floor. It was praise, certainly,
but it was praise that she despised, and was
written that the editor might glorify himself, not her—
written to prove that if she had not, by great good fortune,
pitched upon the editor's theory of novel-writing
as the basis of her work, she must inevitably and disastrously
have failed. Aunt Catharine was more easily
pleased, and thought Fanny had every reason to be
satisfied with it. For her part, she could not see what
could have been asked for better than that. Dr. Gilbert
was not altogether displeased with it. At least,
he thought the effect of it would be to help the sale of
the book.

A week after this, Dr. Gilbert received by mail

copies of the papers whose editors he had favored with
the volume. These Fanny had looked forward to with
greedy expectation, but she was more disgusted with their
notices of her book than with that of the Examiner.
The Londonderry Gazette, “owing to the crowded state
of its columns,” (which columns were occupied largely
with dead advertisements,) had only space to repeat the
very judicious remarks of brother Highway of the Littleton
Examiner, which it was glad to do, because it
was so rare that any thing appeared in that sheet worthy
of unqualified approval. It then copied the closing
paragraph entire, with the exception of the opening sentence.
The editor of the North Yerrington Courier
had not, up to the time of going to press, been in the
enjoyment of sufficient leisure to give the book such a
perusal as would enable him to do justice to the fair
writer. In the mean time, that his numerous readers
might get an inkling of what a treat was in store for
them, he would present the opinion of brother Highway
of the Littleton Examiner, who was admitted, “by the
ladies,” to be a judge of such matters, and who was evidently
thinking about “them trout” when he spoke of
the “mountain brook.” This last suggestion Fanny did
not understand; but it was a habit of the editor to
carry on a private correspondence with his friends by
toothsome allusions to matters from which the envious
public were shut out altogether. The dodge by which
the editor escaped noticing her book, Fanny understood
very well. He was always pressed for time, and was
always promising to do something the next week, relying
upon the public to forget his promise, and upon
himself to break it.

All the fragrance presented to Fanny's fastidious
nostrils by the “local press” was exhausted. It had
said no word against her book—it had, in reality,
praised it very highly—but it had given her no satisfaction.
Newspaper immortality never had seemed so
hollow to her. Other papers came in slowly. One
spoke of Tristram Trevanion as a sprightly juvenile,
which all the children would insist on having; and
parents and guardians might as well purchase the volume
first as last. Another, without having read the
book, presumed that it was not mistaken in stating that
the volume treated of the times of the Crusades.
There was a chivalric smack to the title of the book
which was quite attractive, though the writer had drawn
her inspiration, doubtless, from Walter Scott.

In accordance with the directions of Mr. Frank Sargent,
all these papers were sent to him, that he might
know what reception his adventure as a publisher was
meeting with. In the mean time, Fanny sought for city
papers on every hand. Very few were taken in Crampton,
and none seemed to be conscious of her and her
volume. A few weeks passed away, when she received
from her publisher a New York paper, with a long advertisement,
marked to attract her attention. The testimonials
to the excellencies of “Tristram Trevanion,”
copied from various papers and periodicals, surprised
and delighted her. It was better than she had believed
possible. First in the list of testimonials was the following:

—Lit. Examiner.

Then followed closely:

—N. Y.
Courier.

—Lon. Gazette.

“Parents and guardians may as well purchase the
volume first as last;” “drawn her inspiration from
Walter Scott;” and similar spirited and inspiring sentences
and phrases, footed by the authority quoted, in
italics, filled up a long half-column.

Strangely enough, Fanny did not remember to have
seen these sentences before. That she should have been
thus splendidly noticed in the Literary Examiner, the
New York Courier, and the London Gazette, seemed
like the realization of her most ambitious dreams. She
longed to get hold of the papers themselves, that she
might swallow full goblets of the nectar with which her
enterprising publisher had only allowed her to moisten
her thirsty lips. One thing seemed, for the moment,
blissfully certain—that a book which had not only received
the praise of the metropolitan journals of her
own country, but compelled the reluctant applause of a
high transatlantic authority, could not be considered a
failure, even should it prove to be an unprofitable venture
financially.

Full of her new delight, Fanny's first thought was
to visit Mary Hammett, and allow her to share in her
pleasure. The thought was executed at once, and Mary

met the young authoress with genuine gladness, for she
seemed happier than she had been for many weeks.
“Now what?” said the schoolmistress, as they sat
down together.

“Oh! I'm so happy!” exclaimed Fanny, expiring
a long breath, as if her bosom were overloaded.

“Now what again, then?” said Miss Hammett, with
a smile, bending to Fanny, and kissing her flushed forehead.

“I think Mr. Sargent is very kind,” said Fanny.

Miss Hammett laughed. “Do you state that as an
independent proposition, or has it some relation to you
and your book?” she inquired.

“I think,” responded Fanny, “that he has taken a
great deal of pains in circulating my book, and collecting
and publishing the notices of it. Then he is so
thoughtful to send these notices to me. I suppose he
thinks that I am a poor, anxious girl up here in the country,
who needs comfort, so he tries to comfort me. I
have a great inclination to fall in love with him.”

“Don't, I pray you,” said Miss Hammett. “It
might break the heart of some poor girl. But come,
Fanny, you have not told me what makes you so
happy.”

“Oh! I'm keeping it from you, to excite your curiosity.
You will borrow it, as you do Mr. Sargent's
letters, if I show it.”

Fanny held the paper in her hands, and indicated
that the secret of her happiness was in its pages. Then
she slowly unfolded it, and finding the advertisement,
handed it to Miss Hammett to peruse in silence. Then
she sat back and watched the face of her sympathetic

companion, that she might gather new satisfaction from
its expressions of surprise and pleasure.

Miss Hammett read the advertisement from beginning
to end; but, for some reason, Fanny failed to find
in her face the expressions she anticipated. On the
contrary, Miss Hammett's hand began to tremble, her
cheeks and forehead grew hot and flushed, and it seemed
as if she could never finish reading, and lift her eyes to
those of the expectant authoress.

“Mary Hammett, what is the matter?” inquired
Fanny, with genuine concern.

The schoolmistress lifted her eyes at this inquiry,
with a costly effort of self-composure, and said: “My
dear girl, I am afraid you have deceived yourself.”

“What can you mean?” inquired Fanny.

“Have you never seen these sentences before?”
said Miss Hammett.

“Never. Have you?”

“I think I have,” replied Mary, sadly; and going to
her table, she took from a pile of papers a copy of the
Littleton Examiner. Unfolding it, as she returned to
her seat, she pointed Fanny to the notice of her volume
in that sheet, and said: “You will see that it was the
Littleton, and not the Literary Examiner, that your
publisher has quoted.”

“But the extract is different to the original,” said
Fanny, in alarm.

“The words are all there,” replied Mary, quietly.

“But what is this from the New York Courier?”

“You mistake again,” said Mary. “That is the
North Yerrington Courier. You remember that that
paper adopted the Examiner's notice.”

Fanny read in the London Gazette's notice the
words, “in fancy's quickened ear,” and then, as the
truth burst fully upon her, her bosom heaved heavily,
and the tears filled her eyes.

Miss Hammett took the poor girl's head upon her
shoulder, where for a few minutes she sobbed in silence.
Then Miss Gilbert rose to her feet, and wiped her eyes.
After the first shock of disappointment, came anger.
“Mr. Sargent is not the man I supposed him to be,”
said she. “He has intended to deceive the public, and
to deceive me. These contemptible abbreviations are
coolly calculated to mislead. It is mean; it is outrageous;
it is a fraud upon the public. Does Mr. Frank
Sargent suppose that I will allow a book of mine to be
pushed by such paltry lies as these? I will write him
a letter that will make his cheeks tingle. I will tell
him what I think of him, and his accursed publishing
machinery.”

Fanny walked the room with flashing eyes, and delivered
her words with fiery vehemence, while Miss
Hammett sat and watched her with such calmness as
she could command. At length the excitement was
exhausted, and the schoolmistress pointed to a chair,
and said: “There, Fanny, sit down! Let me beg you
to do nothing while you are angry, for you will be
sorry.”

“Well, don't you think it was mean in him to try
to deceive the public in this way?” said Fanny, taking
her seat.

“Possibly some clerk may have done it. Possibly
the printer made the changes on his own responsibility.
Possibly Mr. Sargent, in his haste, for he must be a

very busy man, may have written these abbreviations
without noticing the coincidences that we have detected
at all. There are a hundred possibilities, either of
which would relieve him from all blame in the matter.”

Fanny was staggered, but still declared her belief
that it was an intentional deception.

“Then you think,” said Miss Hammett, “that a person
who, for purposes of gain, tries to mislead the public
by attributing to one name that for which another is
responsible, is very blameworthy, do you?”

“I do, indeed. What a question!”

“Then if my friend, Miss Fanny Gilbert—a young
woman—writes a book, and, for any selfish purpose
whatever, says to the public upon her title-page that her
book was written by a gentleman, bearing the name of
Everard Everest, I am to suppose that she is unworthy
of my friendship, and legitimately the subject of her
publisher's execration, am I?”

“How ridiculous! That is not like you at all, Miss
Hammett,” exclaimed Fanny with a sneer.

“We can very easily imagine circumstances in
which it would not be ridiculous,” responded Mary,
entirely unruffled; “at least, I know that authors have
tricks, and I have no doubt that publishers have also—
tricks whose essential nature and character are hidden to
both by the veil of long usage, or the long veil of usage
—which you please. My only wish is to have you act
carefully and charitably. You are disappointed and
angry, because you have been deceived, and because
you imagine your publisher intended to deceive the
public. You do not know that he intended to do any

such thing, or that he personally saw the advertisement
before its publication.”

Fanny smiled sadly. She was not convinced that
her anger had been without cause; but the schoolmistress,
in her earnest endeavor to vindicate the excellent
intentions and character of Mr. Frank Sargent, had out-witted
and silenced her. “I have a good mind to be
angry with you, Mary Hammett,” said Fanny.

“Why, my dear?”

“Because you will never allow that Mr. Sargent
can do wrong, and are always making me ashamed of
myself.”

The schoolmistress consciously blushed, and with a
peculiarly expressive smile, said that she had heard a
great deal in her life of quarrels between authors and
publishers, and was determined to do what she could to
lessen their number. Fanny then took the New York
journal, which had so gratified and so disappointed her,
and, tearing it in pieces, threw it upon the fire with a
sigh, saying: “My father shall never see this.”

As the young authoress walked thoughtfully homeward,
some bird among the maples, or some spirit of
the air, whispered in her ear an unwelcome truth.
Where it came from, what wings bore it, she never
knew; but she received it as authentic. Her book was
a failure, and her publisher, poorly able to suffer loss,
had resorted to a violent advertising struggle to save it
from falling dead at the threshold of the market. All
her winter's labor, all her anxiety, all her doubts and
fears, had availed her nothing. She had toiled and
hoped for fame, but she had reaped only disappointment
and mortification. “I'm a fool,” she said to herself, “to

care for the praise of a public that proves itself so
utterly stupid. I'm a fool, to permit myself to be miserable,
because fools do not know the difference between
that which is valuable and that which is trash.”

This was an outburst of spite and spleen, and after it
came a quiet flow of common-sense. Fanny felt that
she was making herself ridiculous, for she knew that if
the public had praised and patronized her, it would not
have seemed foolish to her at all. On the contrary, it
would have proved itself to be a very discriminating and
just public indeed, whose praise outweighed the value of
gold. She was very glad she had not expressed her
spite in the hearing of the schoolmistress, for then she
would have had this consideration thrust upon her in
the peculiarly decisive style of that young woman.

When she entered her home, she encountered her
father, looking grave and depressed. He spoke to her
with a compassionate tone, quite unusual with him, and
after they had sat down in the parlor, he told her that
he had carried a periodical in his pocket for several
days, which contained a review of her book. He had
hesitated to show it to her, knowing that it would give
her pain; but he had concluded, as it was written in a
kind spirit, that she ought to see it. The doctor's eyes
were moist with sympathy for his daughter, and, as he
handed her the journal, so heavily freighted with pain
for her, he put his hand upon her shoulder with unwonted
tenderness, and said: “You must not let it
trouble you, Fanny. Rise above it—rise above it.”

Fanny took the heavy pamphlet, and, without saying
a word, retired to read it alone. If she had not
risen above it, she had risen to it. Disappointment had

been piled upon her so heavily, that she felt herself
growing desperately strong. It was a review of several
pages—discriminating, kind, and conscientious. The
writer professed to have been attracted to the volume
by the music of its title, and then to have read it with
no small degree of interest because of its genuine enthusiasm.
It was evidently the product of a girl quite
young, who had the materials of a noble womanhood in
her, but who should not think of touching pen to paper
again until the suns of a luster or a decade had ripened
her. It quoted passages descriptive of natural scenery,
to show how well she could write of that which she had
observed, and then copied sketches of life to prove that
she knew nothing of life whatever. Passages that
Fanny had regarded as the choicest in her book she had
the pain to see pointed out as the evidences of her
youthful immaturity, or of her youthful tendency toward
extravagance. It spoke of her book as a “school-girl
performance,” and told the writer that she must not
hope to win the ear and heart of the world, until, by
genuine contact and sympathy with the world, she had
learned its wants, experienced in herself its hopes and
disappointments, its fears and its aspirations, and could
speak from a heart rendered tenderly humane to the
heart of humanity. Under the careful but faithful
touch of the critic's pen, dream and delusion were dissolved,
and when she had concluded the persual of his
article, “Tristram Trevanion” lay before her riddled,
disembowelled, and hacked so terribly, that the manes of
the Jewish dwarf, if it had been present, would have
considered itself sufficiently avenged, even if it had been
as exacting as old Shylock himself.

Fanny closed the pamphlet, raised it higher than her
head, and, dashing it to the floor with all her force, said:
“I thank you, sir! After this, I care for nothing. I
know the worst.”

This violence to the review was not the result of
anger, but of powerfully excited feeling, that blindly
sought for some adequate mode of expression. She was
relieved. She felt that she had read the truth, and that,
whatever the critical world might have to say further,
she had nothing to dread. She looked upon the prostrate
and sprawling pamphlet, and nodded her head, and
pressed her lips together, and said, “I thank you, sir,”
a great many times.

The mental storm passed off with abundant lightning,
thunder, and wind, but no rain. Discipline had
done Miss Gilbert momentary good, at least; but she
sighed when she thought that her career was hardly
begun. What! must she wait for long years before
she could hope to do any thing worthy of public consideration?
Then hurrah for life!

The spell that had so long held her in thrall was
dissipated. The fate of her book was sealed. She had
no worthy praise to hope for in connection with it, and
had given up all idea of reward. A thousand schemes
were started in her active brain, and she was surprised
to find that her desire for praise had been essentially a
terrible bondage to her best life, and a bar to her best
happiness. She had not, it is true, fully comprehended
the fact that she had been subject to the most disgusting
and demoralizing slavery, next to the slavery of appetite,
to which the soul can voluntarily bow its neck; but
she was conscious, for the time, of a new sense of freedom,

and felt her soul expanding and strengthening in
its influence.

But what could she see of life in Crampton? She
would be mistress of the little life there was there, and
get away as soon as possible where it was better, and
more abundant. The change came at last, in a way she
little anticipated; but meantime, she never relinquished
the project of having a career.