her that no
possessor of good books could lack the privilege of spiritual sanctuary.

"Ah! yes, I know few pleasures so great as that of finding one's own
idea, or hope, or longing, finely expressed, half-born thoughts alive
and of stately stature; and then the exquisite touches of art upon quick
nerves, the enlarging of the realms of imagination, knowledge, the
heightening of perceptions, intuitions; finally the blessed power of
escaping from oneself, with the paradoxical reward of greater
self-realization! But, ah, Professor, to me there is a 'but' even here.
I am oppressed by a sense of the discrepancy between the world that
books disclose to me, and the world that I myself inhabit. In books, the
_impossibilities_ are all left out. They give you no sense of the sordid
Inevitable that looms so large on the grey horizon. Another more
personal quarrel that I have with books is on account of their attacking
all my pet prejudices, and sneering at the type of woman that I have the
misfortune to belong to. I am always exhorted to cure myself of being
myself. Nothing less would suffice. Now this is wounding. All my
particular feelings, my strongest beliefs, are condemned, directly or by
inference. I could almost believe that there is a literary conspiracy to
reform me. The "true women" of literature infallibly think and feel
precisely as I do _not_ think and feel, while the sentiments that I
detest--woe is me--are lauded to the skies. Truly, if we women don't
know exactly what we ought to think and feel, it is not for want of
telling. Yet you say, Professor, in this very letter, that the sense of
having a peculiar experience is always an illusion, that every feeling
of ours has been felt before, if not in our own day, then in the crowded
past, with its throngs of forgotten lives and unrecorded experiences. I
wish to heaven I could meet those who have had exactly mine!"

Hadria did not keep up an active correspondence with Miss Du Prel or
with the Professor. She had no idea of adding to the burden of their
busy lives, by wails for sympathy. It seemed to her feeble, and
contemptible, to ask to be dragged up by their strength, instead of
exerting her own. If that were insufficient, why then let her go down,
as thousands had gone down before her. As a miser telling his gold, she
would read and re-read those occasional letters, written amidst the
stress of life at high pressure, and bearing evidence of that life of
thought and