“Will my readers see it as I see it?  Will they thank me for my high opinion of their culture, in assuming that it will be quite as plain to them as to me?  If there should accidentally be an allusion to classical or scientific literature, which they do not understand at the first hasty, careless, novel-reading glance, will they inform themselves, and then appreciate my reason for employing it, and thank me for the hint; or will they attempt to ridicule my pedantry?  When will they begin to suspect that what they may imagine sounds ‘learned’ in my writings, merely appears so to them because they have not climbed high enough to see how vast, how infinite is the sphere of human learning?  No, no, dear reader, shivering with learning-phobia, I am not learned.  You are only a little, a very little more ignorant.  Doubtless you know many things which I should be glad to learn; come, let us barter.  Let us all study the life of Giovanni Pico Mirandola, and then we shall begin to understand the meaning of the word ‘learned.’”

Edna unintentionally and continually judged her readers according to her own standard, and so eager, so unquenchable was her thirst for knowledge, that she could not understand how the utterance of some new fact, or the redressing and presentation of some forgotten idea, could possibly be regarded as an insult by the person thus benefited.  Her first book taught her what was termed her “surplus paraded erudition,” had wounded the amour propre of the public; but she was conscientiously experimenting on public taste, and though some of her indolent, luxurious readers, who wished even their thinking done by proxy, shuddered at the “spring-water pumped upon their nerves,” she good-naturedly overlooked their grimances and groans, and continued the hydropathic treatment even in her second book, hoping some good effects from the shock.  Of one intensely gratifying fact she could not fail to be thoroughly informed, by the avalanche of letters which almost daily covered her desk; she had at least ensconced herself securely in a citadel, whence she could smilingly defy all assaults—­in the warm hearts of her noble countrywomen.  Safely sheltered in their sincere and devoted love, she cared little for the shafts that rattled and broke against the rocky ramparts, and, recoiling, dropped out of sight in the moat below.

So with many misgivings, and much hope, and great patience, she worked on assiduously, and early in summer her book was finished and placed in the publisher’s hands.

In the midst of her anxiety concerning its reception, a new and terrible apprehension took possession of her, for it became painfully evident that Felix, whose health had never been good, was slowly but steadily declining.

Mrs. Andrews and Edna took him to Sharon, to Saratoga, and to various other favorite resorts for invalids, but with no visible results that were at all encouraging, and at last they came home almost disheartened.  Dr. Howell finally prescribed a sea-voyage, and a sojourn of some weeks at Eaux Bonne in the Pyrennes, as those waters had effected some remarkable cures.