ecting her to do a problem in calculus in
the midst of an earthquake.'

And the following chapter is a graphic presentation as to how Lydia
made her choice "in perfect freedom"--oh, the frightful sarcasm of the
phrase--during the excitement of the wedding preparations and under
the pressure of expensive gifts and the ideas of over enthusiastic
"society" friends.

Lydia now began her own "squirrel-cage" existence, even her husband
urges her into extravagance in spite of her protest by saying,
"Nothing's too good for you. And besides, it's an asset. The mortgage
won't be so very large. And if we're in it, we'll just have to live up
to it. It'll be a stimulus."

One of the sane characters of the book is dear, lovable, gruff Mr.
Melton, who is Lydia's godfather, and her final awakening is largely
due to him. One day he finds Lydia's mother upstairs sick-a-bed, and
thus breaks forth to his godchild:

'About your mother--I know without going upstairs that she is
floored with one or another manifestation of the great disease
of _social-ambitionitis_. But calm yourself. It's not so bad
as it seems when you've got the right doctor, I've practiced
for thirty years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring
anything new on me. I've taken your mother through doily fever
induced by the change from tablecloths to bare tops, through
portiere inflammation, through afternoon tea distemper,
through _art-nouveau_ prostration and mission furniture palsy,
not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity over the
necessity of having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust
me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her.'

And later in speaking of Lydia's sister he affirms:

'Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman. She has too
many of your father's brains for the life she's been shunted
into. She might be damming up a big river with a finely
constructed concrete dam, and what she is giving all her
strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little trickle with
her bare hands. The achievement of her life is to give on
a two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five
thousand like your father. She does it; she's a remarkably
forceful woman, but it frets her. She ought to be in better
business, and she knows it, though she won't admit it.'

Oh, the pity of it, the woe of it, the horror of it, for it is one of
the curses o