ABSTRACT
There is nothing fresh in attributing to bad bringing up the faults of a flighty young woman, who frisks about like a kitten, tells fibs, sprawls in rocking-chairs, scratches her head when she is thinking, and introduces risky subjects when she is talking to her male friends. There is nothing philosophic in introducing the reader to a set of dramatis personae every one of whom has some hideous flaw or blemish of character, nor in running counter to all the experience of human nature by making a giddy heroine suddenly develop into a morbidly argumentative creature, ready to sacrifice to a theoretical fad every instinct of womanhood and maternity. Miss Achurch’s playfulness is terrible in its resolute archness, and her self-conscious girlish gaiety positively sets one’s teeth on edge.
