
In a modest brick house on a bustling Broadway street, a young woman sits at a writing table, the spring light filtering through an open window as a canary sings its bright hymn. She studies her own reflection in a tarnished mirror, noting the slow fade of youth and the ache of a lingering cough that has soured her marriage, while her loyal servant Toussaint offers a basket of sweet black grapes and gentle conversation. The scene captures a delicate balance between genteel appearance and the harsh realities of a city in flux, hinting at the personal and social upheavals that lie ahead.
As the season turns, she wrestles with the expectations of love, money, and propriety, feeling the weight of a marriage that offers little comfort. The narrative unfurls against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, where questions of identity, duty, and freedom begin to surface. Listeners will be drawn into her inner turmoil and the subtle power struggles that shape her world, setting the stage for a compelling journey through the early days of the Great Transition.
Language
en
Duration
~17 hours (1035K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Original publisher
United States: Carleton, 1863.
Credits
KD Weeks, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Release date
2022-04-19
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1813–1880
A busy 19th-century literary life took him from newspapers and magazines to poetry, plays, novels, and schoolbooks. He is also remembered for the enduring song lyric "A Life on the Ocean Wave" and for later books exploring Spiritualism.
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