W.E. GRIFFIS.




JASON'S QUEST.


I.

This is a story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it
there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering
mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the
climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men are modest and
women weak.

Still, I do not lose faith in humanity, but hope for better things in
the broad, bright future. I would respectfully call attention to
the moral of this tale, and, as for the heroes and heroines of the
hereafter, I cheerfully leave them to regulate their affairs upon a
different basis; which basis, I devoutly believe, will be one of the
inevitable results of time.

But, lo! the heroine approaches and the story begins!

* * * * *

Life with some of us is but the grouping of a few brilliant or sombre
tableaux, which are like the famous lines in an epic that immortalize
the whole. Maud's life was such a one, and her years had been rather