LIFE IN VARIED PHASES: ILLUSTRATED In a Series of Sketches.
BYMRS. CAROLINE H. BUTLER.
"Thoughts that have tarried in my mind, and peopled its inner chambers."
BOSTON:
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY,
110 WASHINGTON STREET.
1851.Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. WRIGHT AND HASTY, PRINTERS, 3 WATER STREET, BOSTON.
TO
MY BROTHER-IN-LAW
AND
MOST KIND FRIEND,
MR. J. H. BUTLER,
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED.
PREFACE.
Between the preface to a new book and the skillfully worded placard which ushers in some new medicine to the patronage of the public, there is this similitude—they are but seldom read. For most persons receive a new book as they would some new medicament—if it happen to please their taste and meet their present necessities, they swallow it complacently. If not, they throw it aside with indifference, perhaps disgust, reckless of the mental toil with which the writer, like the pharmacentist with his medical arcanum, may have heralded his freshly prepared compound of words.
To those however who may glance over these few prefatory lines, the writer would say a few words. Of the number, there may be those, to whom some of the following tales, illustrative of Life in varied Phases, are familiar. To such, their merits, as their faults, are already known. To those to whom they may at least possess the charm of novelty, she would briefly say, that in these Pictures of Life sketched both in the sunshine of gladness, and in the shades of affliction, it has been her aim to impress each with some pleasing moral, and give to the play of Fancy, the beauty of virtue and truthfulness.
C. H. BUTLER.
CONTENTS.
- NELLY, THE RAG-GATHERER. 9
- THE PERPLEXED STUDENT. 42
- GAITY. 77
- THE POET LÍ. 121
- LITTLE WINNIE. 142
- THE WIDOW AND THE DEFORMED. 163
- THE COUNTESS. 216
- THE CURTAIN LIFTED. 244
- THE MAID OF CHE-KYANG. 269
