Old World Series.
THE STORY OF IDA
In the last ray of Sunset.
And the last day of the Year.
1872.
THE STORY OF IDA
EPITAPH
ON AN ETRURIAN TOMB BY
FRANCESCA ALEXANDER
Portland, Maine
THOMAS B. MOSHER
Mdcccxcix
This First Edition onVan Gelder paper consists of 925 copies.
PREFACE
[Pg vii]
PREFACE.
For now some ten or twelve years I have been asking every good writerwhom I knew, to write some part of what was exactly true, in thegreatest of the sciences, that of Humanity. It seemed to me time thatthe Poet and Romance-writer should become now the strict historian ofdays which, professing the openest proclamation of themselves, keptyet in secrecy all that was most beautiful, all that was most woful,in the multitude of their unshepherded souls. And, during these yearsof unanswered petitioning, I have become more and more convinced thatthe wholesomest antagonism to whatever is dangerous in the temper,or foolish in the extravagance, of modern Fiction, would be found insometimes substituting for the artfully-combined improbability, thecareful record of providentially ordered Fact.
Providentially, I mean, not in the fitting together of evil so as toproduce visible[Pg viii] good,—but in the enforcement, though under shadowswhich mean but the difference between finite and infinite knowledge,of certain laws of moral retribution which enough indicate for ourguidance, the Will, and for our comfort the Presence, of the Judge andFather of men.
It might be thought that the function of such domestic history wasenough fulfilled by the frequency and full detail of modern biography.But lives in wh