"
In addition to elevating the tone of our intellectual life, however,
Mrs. Potts found it necessary to support herself and her son. That she
could devise a way to merge these important duties will perhaps be
surmised. Comfortably installed in a cottage at the south end of town
with her household belongings, including a chair once sat in by the
Adams-husband of her heaven-favored second cousin, she lost no time in
prosecuting her double mission. The title of the work with which she
began her task of uplifting our masses was "Gaskell's Compendium of
Forms," a meritorious production of amazing and quite infinite scope,
elegantly illustrated. The book weighed five pounds and cost three
dollars, which was sixty cents a pound, as Westley Keyts took the
trouble to ascertain. But it was indeed a work admirably calculated for
a community of diversified interests. While Solon Denney might occupy
himself with the "Aid to English Composition," including "common errors
corrected, good taste, figures of speech, and sentence building," the
Eubanks ladies could further inform themselves upon grave affairs of
"The Home and Family,--Life, Health, Happiness, Human Love," etc., or
upon more frivolous concerns, such as "Introductions and Salutations,
Carriage and Horseback Riding, Croquet, Archery, and Matinee parties,
and the Art of Conversation.
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