Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the WarEggleston, George Cary
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Dorothy South: A Love Story of Virginia Just Before the War
Eggleston, George Cary
Love stories; Virginia -- Fiction
She called him “Cousin Arthur,” of course. Had not a distant relative of
his once married a still more distant kinswoman of her own? It would
have been deemed in Virginia a distinct discourtesy in her not to call
him “Cousin Arthur.”
IX
DOROTHY’S CASE
_A_fter a few weeks of work Arthur Brent’s laboratory was ready for use,
with all its apparatus in place and all its reserve supply of chemicals
safely bestowed in a small, log built hut standing apart.
His books too had been brought to the house and unpacked. He provided
shelf room for them in the various apartments, in the broad hallway, and
even upon the stairs. There were a multitude of volumes--largely the
accumulations of years of study and travel on his own and his father’s
part. The collection included all that was best in scientific
literature, and much that was best in history, in philosophy and in
_belles lettres_. To this latter department he had ordered large
additions made when sending for his books--this with an eye to Dorothy’s
education.
There was already a library of some importance at Wyanoke, the result of
irregular buying during two hundred years past. Swift was there in time
stained vellum. The poets, from Dryden and Pope to the last quarter of
the eighteenth century were well represented, and there were original
editions of “Childe Harold,” and “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” on
the shelves. Scott was present in leathern cuirass of binding--both in
his novels and in his poems. But there was not a line of Coleridge or
Wordsworth or Shelley or Rogers or Campbell or John Keats, not a
suggestion of Matthew Arnold. Tennyson, Browning and their fellows were
completely absent, though Bailey’s “Festus” was there to represent
modern poetry.
The latest novels in the list, apart from Scott, were “Evelina,” “The
Children of The Abbey,” “Thaddeus of Warsaw,” “Scottish Chiefs” and some
others of their kind. But all the abominations of Smollett, all the
grossness of Fielding, all the ribaldry of Richardson, and all the
sentimental indecency of Laurence Sterne were present in full force--on
top shelves, out of consideration for maidenly modesty.
In history there were Josephus and Rollin, and scarcely anything else.
Hume was excluded because of his scepticism, and Gibbon had been passed
over as a monster of unbelief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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