In 1861 Miss Alcott published her novel 'Moods', the most ambitious work she had yet attempted, and one on which she placed many fond hopes. But although 'Moods' represented all the ideality and poetry of life as it then appeared to the young author, it was not a great success. She had toiled faithfully over its composition, and had wrought into it many of her own girlish dreams, but the heroine was not real, and many of the situations were artificial. The defect lay in the author's own gift, which did not reach out to work of a purely imaginative character. Miss Alcott was bitterly disappointed over the meagre success of 'Moods', which she attributed to the many changes she had made in it, through the advice of the different publishers who had rejected it. In spite of the fame that her other books brought, 'Moods' always held a warm place in her heart.
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Louisa May Alcott. Moods
CONTENTS:
CHAPTER I. IN A YEAR
CHAPTER II. WHIMS
CHAPTER III. AFLOAT
CHAPTER IV. THROUGH FLOOD AND FIELD AND FIRE
CHAPTER V. A GOLDEN WEDDING
CHAPTER VI. WHY SYLVIA WAS HAPPY
CHAPTER VII. DULL BUT NECESSARY
CHAPTER VIII. NO
CHAPTER IX. HOLLY
CHAPTER X. YES
CHAPTER XI. WOOING
CHAPTER XII. WEDDING
CHAPTER XIII. SYLVIA'S HONEYMOON
CHAPTER XIV. A FIRESIDE FETE
CHAPTER XV. EARLY AND LATE
CHAPTER XVI. IN THE TWILIGHT
CHAPTER XVII. ASLEEP AND AWAKE
CHAPTER XVIII. WHAT NEXT?
CHAPTER XIX. SIX MONTHS
CHAPTER XX. COME
CHAPTER XXI. OUT OF THE SHADOW
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LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
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"I, too, desire to be just. I will not reproach, defy, or lament, but leave my fate to you. I am all you say, yet in your judgment remember mercy, and believe that at twenty-five there is still hope for the noble but neglected nature, still time to repair the faults of birth, education, and orphanhood. You say, I have a daring will, a love of conquest. Can I not will to overcome myself and do it? Can I not learn to be the woman I have seemed? Love has worked greater miracles, may it not work this? I have longed to be a truer creature than I am; have seen my wasted gifts, felt my capacity for better things, and looked for help from many sources, but never found it till you came. Do you wonder that I tried to make it mine? Adam, you are a self-elected missionary to the world's afflicted; you can look beyond external poverty and see the indigence of souls. I am a pauper in your eyes; stretch out your hand and save me from myself."
Straight through the one vulnerable point in the man's pride went this appeal to the man's pity. Indignation could not turn it aside, contempt blunt its edge, or wounded feeling lessen its force; and yet it failed: for in Adam Warwick justice was stronger than mercy, reason than impulse, head than heart. Experience was a teacher whom he trusted; he had weighed this woman and found her wanting; truth was not in her; the patient endeavor, the hard-won success so possible to many was hardly so to her, and a union between them could bring no lasting good to either. He knew this; had decided it in a calmer hour than the present, and by that decision he would now abide proof against all attacks from without or from within. More gently, but as inflexibly as before, he said—
