Author: Maria Cummins

Publisher:

Published: 2016-11-02

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 9781539869870

The Lamplighter, one of the more popular books in the country when it was released in the mid-19th century, is the engaging story of a undisciplined and unloved girl who has her life transformed, by Providence, through the love of strangers, whose ties to her are greater than anyone initially suspects. "What especially distinguished 'The Lamplighter' from many fictions of its class was its strong flavor of didacticism, though, to be sure, such a flavor was shared by many of her contemporaries....In a memorial sermon, her pastor, Rev Nathaniel Hall of Dorchester, said: 'She received her success with a simple gladness, less that she was famous than that she might be useful; less than she had gained the public's applause than that she had touched to issues human and philanthropic the public's heart, and caused her poor 'Lamplighter' to be the means of illumining other and direr darkness than that of night.' Herein lies the success of this popular novelist of the middle fifties. She little cared for her book as a book, but as a conscious factor in the advance of the race she cared very much. She was an intense believer in the theory of help that it was each one's duty to accomplish during one's stay on earth. She wrote as a moral agent, therefore. Moreover, a wide reading awaited her." -The Christian Register But Gertrude drew back; the colour flushed her cheeks, and her eyes glistened as she fixed them upon his face, with an expression of astonishment and pride. The penetrating look of those dark eyes spoke volumes, and Mr. Bruce replied to their inquiring gaze in these words: "I hope you are not displeased at my frankness." "With your frankness," said Gertrude, calmly; "no, that is a thing that never displeases me. But what I have unconsciously done to inspire you with so much confidence, that, while you defend yourself for defying the wishes of your friends, you hardly give me a voice in the matter?"