The Doctors Daughter | Page 2

of commonplace existence.
It has been my pleasure to probe under the surface of sorrow and song
that makes the swelling, restless tide of human passions a strange and
tempting mystery, even to itself; and though my pen may have failed to
carry out the deep-rooted ambition of my soul, there is some comfort in
the thought that I have made an effort; I have tried my young wings,
with the hope of soaring upward: if they are yet too feeble to bear me, I
am no more than the young eagle, and must rise again from my fall, to
await a gathering confidence and strength that may, or may not, be in
store for me.
A little mouse presumed to be the deliverer of a mighty lion, when this
noble beast lay ensnared and entangled in a net; it was slow and
tiresome work for the tiny benefactor to nibble now here, now there,
wherever its small teeth could find a vulnerable or yielding spot: but a
determination and decision of purpose, coupled with an undaunted and
fearless perseverance, have given issue time and again to achievements
even greater, though still less promising, than the undertaking of the
little mouse in the fable, but for those who can yet take heart, in the
face of possible failure, I think half the battle is won.
In introducing a second effort to the public, I feel called upon to avail
myself of the opportunity it affords me, of thanking many readers for
the kindness and consideration extended to my first. It was kind of
them to have dwelt at length upon its few redeeming traits, and to have
touched lightly and gently upon the cruder and more faulty ones; it was
kind of them to have taken into account every circumstance which had
any bearing upon the nature of the work: to have alluded to the youth

and inexperience of the writer. It was kind, even of those who took it
upon themselves to aver, not in the hearing of the authoress herself, but
elsewhere, that the composition was far from being original. This latter
verdict would have been the highest tribute of all to the talent and
erudition of the authoress, had they who uttered it been capable or
responsible judges of literary merit. Being of that class, instead, who
feel it urgent upon them to say something, however garrulous or silly,
when a local topic agitates their immediate sphere, the authoress has
not much reason for hoping that their intention was really to flatter her
maiden effort, by purposely mistaking it for the work of an older, and
abler hero of the quill; however, if it might have been worthy of a
maturer mind and more powerful pen, in their eyes, a high compliment
is necessarily insinuated, even there, for the humble writer.
If the present story can lighten the burden of an idle hour of sickness or
sorrow; if it may shorten the time of waiting, or distract the monotony
of travel; if it may strike a key-note of common sympathy between its
author and its reader, where the shallow side of nature is regretfully
touched upon; if it may attract the potent attention of even one of those
whose words and actions regulate the tone and tenor of our social life,
to the urgency of encouraging, promoting and favouring the principles
of an active Christian morality, whose beauty lies, not in the depths or
vastness of its abstract conceptions, but in its earnest, humble, and
tireless labours for the advancement of men's spiritual and temporal
welfare--if it may do any one of these things, it shall have more than
realized the fond and fervent wish of the author's heart: it shall have
reaped her a golden harvest for the tiresome task she has just
accomplished, and shall have stimulated anew her every energy, to
associate itself more strongly and ardently than ever, with the cause
which struggles for men's freedom from the fetters of a sordid and
tyrant worldliness.
CHAPTER I.
Five-and-thirty years ago, before many of my fair young readers were
inflicted with the burdens of life, there came into this great world,
under the most ordinary and unpretending circumstances, a helpless

little baby girl: a dear, chubby, little thing, who at that moment, if never
afterwards in the long and intricate course of her mortal career, looked
every jot as interesting and as promising of a possible extraordinary
destiny as did the little being who, some years before that, opened her
eyes for the first time upon the elegant surroundings of a chamber in
Kensington Palace; and neither the Princess Louise of Sachsen-Koburg,
nor Edward the Duke of Kent, were any more elated or gratified over
the grand event which came into their lives on the twenty-fourth