Accepted Addresses (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A PUESE OR A COFFIN. THE TRITE STORY OF LADY DURBAR. I Tell the following story almost exactly " as it was told to me." I have amplified little and exaggerated nothing. The names, for obvious reasons, have been changed. The facts ?they are facts?on which the tale is founded strike me as very much resembling what the late S. T. Coleridge was wont to call " pyschological curiosities." The whole is but an illustration of the astonishing contradictions daily and hourly to be met with in that more astonishing combination of good and evil?of nobility and meanness?of sincerity and hypocrisy? of generosity and avarice?the human character. With frightful force will be found here exemplified the truth of the Divine aphorism?" The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." I. A GOOD WOMAN. " Charity covereth a multitude of sins." In the case of Lady Durbar, however, charity's task must have been almost a sinecure, so few sins had her Ladyship, to all appearances, to cover. Very rare are the ladies or gentlemen of whom all speak well, at whom none point the finger of censure, or about whose ears the breath of scandal buzzes not; but you might have walked through every street, square, crescent, and terrace of the censorious and scandal-loving town of B, and over ten miles of its environs withal, any three hundred and sixty odd days out of the year, and still heard nothing but praise, loud, enthusiastic, and heartfelt, of the Lady Durbar.The poor literally adored her. With the ample means with which she had been blessed by Providence she soothed many an aching heart, and made many a desolate home cheerful. Disdaining to confine herself to the conventionalisms of fine- lady charity in the country?to a parsimonious dole of blankets and unlimited supply...