Book News Volume 4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 Excerpt: ...and now there was not in all the town a better-known, a more universally respected woman than Miss Sophy; respected by the women because of her helpful cheery nature and exceeding decorum of conduct; respected by the men because she had a "level head" and "owned considerable property,"--surest passports to favor in the minds of business men. As Miss Sophy sat revolving in her mind the relative proportions between what she had expended and what she had received on the day just closed, a frown deepened on her forehead. The balance did not please her. The margin of profit which she had prescribed to herself as a uniform rule had been diminished by injudicious luxury added to dinner. "'T was the jelly," she said to herself. "That was what did it. But I can't bring myself to give roast mutton without it. Capers come cheaper and go farther. I'll boil oftener." At least hundreds of times in the last eight years Miss Sophy had come to this or similar resolutions; but they always failed her when the instant arrived for putting them into practice. Her love of a good dinner herself, and her still keener love of the approbation she won by setting it before others, kept up a perpetual warfare with her savingness, and being two to one, often came off victorious, --often enough to keep up her reputation for setting the best table in the town; not often enough, however, to prevent her making money in the long run, and coming out at the end of the year with a creditable surplus ahead. Just as Miss Sophy had said, half aloud, the last words of her soliloquy, she heard a faint knock at the door, --an irresolute, vacillating sort of knock, which aroused her curiosity at once. "Whoever's that," she said, rising briskly, "that...