The date is fixed by an entry which appears on a subsequent page with the
note: "I was presented at court to-day by my mother." After this entry
life becomes more interesting than literature, evidently, for the book
ceases to be a record of reading and thought with an occasional note on
people and circumstances, and becomes just the opposite, viz., a diary of
events interspersed with sketches of character and only a rare allusion to
literature. But, judging by the number and variety and the careful record
kept of the works she read, the six months or so immediately preceding her
presentation must have been a time of the greatest intellectual activity,
her father's influence being, as usual, often apparent as primary
instigator. Once, when they were having coffee out on the lawn after
dinner, he began a discussion in her hearing about books with another
gentleman who was staying in the house, and in the course of it he
happened to praise "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" eloquently. He said
they were superior in their own line to anything which the present day has
produced. "They are true to life in every particular," he maintained, "and
not only to the life of those times, but of all time. In fact, you feel as
you read that it is not fiction, but human nature itself that you are
studying; and there is an education in moral philosophy on every page."

Evadne was much impressed, and being anxious to know what an education in
moral philosophy might be, she got "Roderick Random" and "Tom Jones" out
of the library, when she went in that evening, and took them to her own
room to study. They were the two books already referred to as being among
the last she read just before she came out. They did not please her, but
she waded through them from beginning to end conscientiously,
nevertheless, and then she made her remarks.

Of "Roderick Random" she wrote: