Project Gutenberg's A Little Journey in the World, by Charles Dudley Warner

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Title: A Little Journey in the World

Author: Charles Dudley Warner

Last Updated: February 22, 2009
Release Date: August 22, 2006 [EBook #3103]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD ***

Produced by David Widger

A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

By Charles Dudley Warner

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

The title naturally suggested for this story was "A Dead Soul," but it
was discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel by
Nikolai Gogol--"Dead Souls"--though the motive has nothing in common
with that used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud
practiced by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of "serfs"
(called souls) not living, or "dead souls."

This story is an attempt to trace the demoralization in a woman's soul
of certain well-known influences in our existing social life. In no
other way could certain phases of our society be made to appear so
distinctly as when reflected in the once pure mirror of a woman's soul.

The character of Margaret is the portrait of no one woman. But it was
suggested by the career of two women (among others less marked) who had
begun life with the highest ideals, which had been gradually eaten
away and destroyed by "prosperous" marriages and association with
unscrupulous methods of acquiring money.

The deterioration was gradual. The women were in all outward conduct
unchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces
were not lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of
religion were even emphasized, but worldliness had eaten the heart out
of them, and they were "dead souls." The tragedy of the withered
life was a thousand-fold enhanced by the external show of prosperous
respectability.

The story was first published (in 1888) in Harper's Monthly. During its
progress--and it was printed as soon as each installment was ready (a
very poor plan)--I was in receipt of the usual letters of sympathy,
or protest, and advice. One sympathetic missive urged the removal
of Margaret to a ne