Within the Precincts Volume 3 (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. 1879 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XLV. CONCLUSION. If this history had proposed to settle and bringto a dramatic conclusion even one single human life, the writer would falter here, feeling her task all unfulfilled; for what have we been able to do more than to bring our poor Lottie at the end of all things to a kind of dead-lock of all the possibilities of life? Such stoppages in the course of human affairs are, however, at least as common as a distinct climax or catastrophe. For one girl or boy whose life lies all fair before them after the first effort, how many are there who have to leave the chapter incomplete, and, turning their backs upon it, to try a second beginning, perhaps with less satisfaction, and certainly with a somewhat disturbed and broken hope Lottie Despard had arrived at this point. Her love had not ended as happy loves end. It had been cut short by a cruel hand; her fabric of happiness had fallen to the ground; her visionary shelter, the house of her dreams, had crumbled about her, leaving nothing but bare walls and broken rafters. Her misery and dismay, the consternation of her young soul when, instead of that fair and pleasant future which was to be her resting-place, she found around her a miserable ruin, we have scarcely attempted to say. What words can tell such a convulsion and rending of earth and sky? She had believed in her lover, and in her love as something above the weakness of ordinary humanity. She had believed herself at last to have found in him the ideal after which she had sighed all her life. His generous ardour to help her whenever he found her in want of help, the enthusiasm of a love which she believed had been given at first sight, like the love the poets tell of, had filled Lottie, s heart with all the sweetness of a perfect faith. Impo..