, who was thus given a high-school education and some few of
the lonely luxuries of life, passed quickly beyond the circulating
libraries in her demands for more. Given through her intellect the
knowledge, her nature was quick to grasp. For kingdoms may be
overthrown, declarations of independence be declared, legislatures
legislate equality, and still--up to this time, at least--the children
of democracy be educated, in free common schools, upon much the same
plan that had been adopted by some Hannah More in bygone centuries
for the only class that then was educated, daughters of the gentry,
young ladies who aspired to be countesses, and to do it gracefully.
Mercedes learned with her writing and reading, which are but edged
tools, little of the art of using them. She was taught some figuring,
which she never used in life; some English history, of which she
assimilated but the meaning of titles and coronets; some mental
philosophy, which her common sense rejected as inanely inapposite to
the life at hand; some moral philosophy, which her very soul spewed
forth; a little embroidery, music, and dancing; and a competent
knowledge of reading French.

When we consider what education and training her life required, the
White Knight in Wonderland's collection of curiosities at his
saddle-bow becomes by comparison a practical equipment.

For guides in the practical conduct of life, she had been told to read
two novels, "Mansfield Park" and "Clarissa." Then there were Mrs.
Susannah Rawson's tales, Miss Catherine Sedgwick's, and "The
Coquette." She had further privately endeavored to read the "Nouvelle
Heloise" in French; but this bored her, and--one regrets to say--the
unambitious though immoral heroine impressed her as an idiot. As a
more up-to-date romance, she had acquired from a corner bookstore a
lavishly pictured novel in octavo, entitled "The Ballet Girl's
Revenge." She could not sew, nor wash, nor cook, nor keep house or
even accounts. Not one faint notion had she of supporting herself.
Domestic service she thought degrading, and she looked with a lofty
scorn upon shop-girls. There were some dreadful women in a house close
by; if Mercedes was conscious of their existence, it was as of women
who were failures in that they played the right cards badly. She held
her own pretty head the higher. For she soon discarded the ballet
girl's biography. By the time she was fourteen, had made another visit
to Nahant, and had once be