emely: he showed us the house where he was born.

The day of retribution was indeed nearer at hand than she anticipated.
In the autumn of 1793 the news of Irish disturbances grew so alarming
that Mr. Edgeworth thought it his duty to return immediately. The
caravan was therefore once more transported to Edgeworthstown.

CHAPTER IV.

WOMANHOOD.

On their return the Edgeworths at first inclined to think that the
English papers had exaggerated the Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a
condition of permanent discontent, they were relieved to find that
though there were alarms of outrages committed by "Hearts of Oak Boys"
and "Defenders," though there were nightly marauders about
Edgeworthstown, though Mr. Edgeworth had been threatened with
assassination, still, all things considered, "things in their
neighborhood were tolerably quiet." In this matter as in others, of
course, the basis of comparison alone constitutes the value of the
inference deduced. In any case the family resumed their quiet course of
existence; Mr. Edgeworth busy with the invention of a telegraph, Miss
Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little ones, visiting and
being visited by her Aunt Ruxton. In the evenings the family gathered
round the fireside and the father read aloud. Late in 1793 Miss
Edgeworth writes:--

This evening my father has been reading out Gay's _Trivia_, to our
great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you and
Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us. If you have
_Trivia_, and if you have time, will you humor your niece so far as
to look at it? I had much rather make a bargain with any one I
loved to read the same book with them at the same hour, than to
look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. "Ah! that is
because my dear niece has no taste and no eyes." But I assure you I
am learning the use of my eyes main fast, and make no doubt, please
Heaven I live to be sixty, to see as well as my neighbors. I am
scratching away very hard at the _Freeman Family_.[3]

That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by the current sentimentalism of
the period, the above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest letters evince
her practical, straightforward common sense. Romance had no place in her
nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her _Letters to Literary Ladies_.
She wrote to her cousin:--

Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after _Lett