The Project Gutenberg eBook, Miss Ludington's Sister, by Edward Bellamy

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Title: Miss Ludington's Sister

Author: Edward Bellamy

Release Date: Februsry 10, 2003 [eBook #6903]
[Most recently updated: October 29, 2005]

Language: english

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER***

E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer

MISS LUDINGTON'S SISTER

by

EDWARD BELLAMY

CHAPTER I.

The happiness of some lives is distributed pretty evenly over the whole
stretch from the cradle to the grave, while that of others comes all at
once, glorifying some particular epoch and leaving the rest in shadow.
During one, five, or ten blithe years, as the case may be, all the
springs of life send up sweet waters; joy is in the very air we breathe;
happiness seems our native element. During this period we know what is
the zest of living, as compared with the mere endurance of existence,
which is, perhaps, the most we have attained to before or since. With men
this culminating epoch comes often in manhood, or even at maturity,
especially with men of arduous and successful careers. But with women it
comes most frequently perhaps in girlhood and young womanhood.
Particularly is this wont to be the fact with women who do not marry, and
with whom, as the years glide on, life becomes lonelier and its interests
fewer.

By the time Miss Ida Ludington was twenty-five years old she recognised
that she had done with happiness, and that the pale pleasures of memory
were all which remained to her.

It was not so much the mere fact that her youth was past, saddening
though that might be, which had so embittered her life, but the
peculiarly cruel manner in which it had been taken from her.

The Ludingtons were one of the old families of Hilton, a little farming
village among the hills of Massachusetts. They were not rich, but were
well-to-do, lived in the largest house in the place, and were regarded
somewhat as local magnates. Miss Ludington's childhood had been an
exceptionally happy one, and as a girl she had been the belle of the
village. Her beauty, together, with her social position