and from
this simple application of the French dictionary results the title of
the romance. Even this does not close the catalogue of the heroine's pet
names however, for in moments of yet higher ecstasy, when she rides
sublime upon the storm of passion, she is styled, not without scientific
appropriateness, "Espy."

Esperance is a young girl who seeks her destiny. She also has her
"wooing moods," during which, on small provocation, she "hastily pens a
few lines"--of verse such as no young lady's diary should be without.
She has, moreover, her intervals of sternness, when she boxes ears; now
in case of her father, unfilially, and anon in more righteous conflict
with her step-mother's wicked lover. But her demonstrations do not
usually take the brief form of blows, but the more formidable shape of
words. Indeed, it takes a good many words to meet the innumerable crises
of her daily life; and, to do her justice, the more desperate the
emergencies, the better she likes them. Anguish is heaped upon her,
father and mother desert her, several eligible lovers jilt her,--she
would be much obliged to you to point out any specific sorrow of which
at least one good specimen has not occurred within her experience. There
is a distressing casualty to every chapter, and then come in the
poisoned arrows! "Once in the room, I bolted the door and threw
myself--not on the bed--the floor better suited my mood. And there I
lay, with reeling senses, and a brain on fire, while in my trampled and
bruised heart were wildly struggling tenderness and scorn, love and
hate, life and death.... The slow-moving hours tolled a mournful
requiem, as the long procession of stricken hopes and joys were borne
onward to their death and burial. And I, the victim, turned
executioner."

The French dictionary extends onward from the title-page, and haunts
these impassioned pages. Phrases of a recondite and elaborate
description, such as "_Oui, monsieur_," "_Tres-bien_," and "_Entrez_,"
adorn the sportive conversation of this cultivated circle. Sometimes,
with higher flight, some one essays to gambol in the Latin tongue: "It
seemed to me that old Tempus must have taken to himself a new pair of
wings to have _fugited_ so rapidly as he did." Yet the French and the
Latin are better than the English; for the main body of the book, while
breaking no important law of morals or of grammar, is scarcely adapted
for any phase of human existence beyond the boarding-school