IN EXTREMIS

"In Extremis," published in 1872, is a story of sentiment; of wretchedness founded on a marriage in which all the love was on one side.

But... One charm belongs to all that Sarah Dana Greenough writes, — pure, sweet English, flowing smoothly and naturally, without a harsh or affected word. This gives an air of refinement and dignity to the most startling incidents; throws a veil of reserve over the most ardent passions; holds eager curiosity in check; and refuses, to the very end, to tell all that it knows.

***

An excerpt from the beginning of:

IN EXTREMIS.

Uncle Mertoun

I.

THE summer after I left school I was very weak and languid. The doctors said I had overworked myself, and mamma took me to Lenox, hoping that the bracing air would strengthen me. I did not suffer any pain, I only felt tired all the time, so that I did not care to read or talk ; but I was very happy, lying still all day long in the hammock on the piazza, watching the shifting cloud shadows and bursts of golden sunshine along the hills and over the valleys, and enjoying the luxury of perfect rest. But I was still happier when my Uncle Mertoun, whom I had not seen for two years, arrived to pass his summer vacation with us. He was a minister, and much older than mamma. How I loved him! I have never seen any one so lovable. There was an atmosphere of gentle tenderness about him that made sweet his slightest word. His very look was a benediction. He had suffered much in his life, but his own sorrows never clouded the joys of others ; and if the shadows of his young wife and little new-born child glided always by his side, as I used to think they did, it was all clothed in viewless shining raiment, and chanting sweet soundless music to his ear. He lived in the life of others. He never seemed to think of himself. Yet sometimes when I stood beside him in the evening and saw his gentle, thoughtful face upturned towards the stars, I would think I read on it a look of yearning, of longing, as if his soul were saying within him,

"How long, O Lord ! how long?"

He had always been very fond of me, and I, who had no father, loved him as if he were uncle and father in one. I felt that he knew me better than any one else did, better even than mamma; and I was never so happy as when sitting by him and telling him all I thought and felt, as I could never do to any other person. His sympathy seemed to draw the words from my lips, the thoughts from my heart. And he was so tender, so gentle, so wise! I shall never again see any one like my Uncle Mertoun.

He had been with us about a week, and was sitting one morning beside me on the piazza, and we were silently gazing together on the lovely, broad spread landscape, all shimmering with the glory of the summer sunshine, when mamma, with a letter in her hand, came out through the long, open window, saying,

"William, there is something that will interest you in this letter," and she read: "I have just heard of the death of Mrs. Eyre at Interlachen."

Uncle Mertoun did not speak for a moment; then he said, solemnly,

"That closes the tragedy."

And he began to walk up and down the piazza with his hands clasped behind him. I was just going to say,

"What tragedy?"

But a warning look from mamma checked me. Presently Uncle Mertoun took his hat and walked away to the grove, and then I asked mamma what he meant. It seemed to me that I had heard the name of Mrs. Eyre before.

"Of course you have," mamma answered. "She used to be Mrs. Irving. She was the mother of that beautiful Helen Irving, that pet of your uncle's, who married so strangely."

"How did she marry strangely?" I asked....

1019858124

IN EXTREMIS