A LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD

By Charles Dudley Warner




INTRODUCTORY SKETCH

The title naturally suggested for this story was "A Dead Soul," but it
was discarded because of the similarity to that of the famous novel by
Nikolai Gogol--"Dead Souls"--though the motive has nothing in common with
that used by the Russian novelist. Gogol exposed an extensive fraud
practiced by the sale, in connection with lands, of the names of "serfs"
(called souls) not living, or "dead souls."

This story is an attempt to trace the demoralization in a woman's soul of
certain well-known influences in our existing social life. In no other
way could certain phases of our society be made to appear so distinctly
as when reflected in the once pure mirror of a woman's soul.

The character of Margaret is the portrait of no one woman. But it was
suggested by the career of two women (among others less marked) who had
begun life with the highest ideals, which had been gradually eaten away
and destroyed by "prosperous" marriages and association with unscrupulous
methods of acquiring money.

The deterioration was gradual. The women were in all outward conduct
unchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces were
not lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of religion were