SELINA
"She'd heard I was fond of reading."
[Page 20.]
Selina
HER HOPEFUL EFFORTS AND
HER LIVELIER FAILURES
By
GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN
Author of EMMY LOU
Illustrated by
H.D. WILLIAMS
D APPLETON AND COMPANY
[vi]NEW YORK · · · · MCMXIV
Copyright, 1914. by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO
E. A. M.
FLORENCE, ITALY
You have long urged me to an attempted portrayal of theAmerican girl of the '80's. I take it that you from your viewpointcoming from long absence from your own country, lookupon her and her moment as in some sense significant.
As I read this girl and the conditions surrounding her,born late, Victorian, she came into being when those sincereand fine tenets upon which the Victorian era founded itself,were become the letter of the original vital idea, and the momentitself sentimental, trite and prudish. Outcome andvictim of the inefficiencies of an hour so flabby and platitudinous,this young girl of these Victorian '80's apparently notonly repudiated her condition made up of absurdities,futilities and inadequacies, but in her maturity has lapsedover into the post-Victorian era as pioneer, she and her companionsof that day, who blazed the way for the army ofwomen now following. Following where, you ask? Ah, now,that is another question, and one I am not at all qualified orprepared to answer.
In the fact that she did repudiate her day and her conditionlies the significance which you see, as I take it. ThatI have read her at the moment of my depicting, piteous ratherthan pertinent, helpless more than heroic, and gropingrather than grasping, I hope will not disappoint you. So sheappears to me; her gravest need, the lack of which renders her[viii]piteous and helpless, being a sense of proportion; a lackanswerable to the false standards around her, or to her sex,or both, who among her sex shall say?
And that this epic of her days is chronicle of but the smalland the petty happening, you will forgive, because this sameday made up of the small and seemingly petty, is one of thethings, she will tell you now, against which she revolted.
Nor am I defending her, nor claiming that she needsdefense. As I see her and have tried to set her down. I offerher to you.
G. M. M.
August, 1914.
Anchorage, Kentucky.