Rachel Gray: A Tale Founded on Fact

Mrs. Gray had never cared about Mary Jones; she had always thought her what she was indeed--a sickly and peevish child. But now her heart yearned towards the young girl, she her...

Rachel sat alone, working and thinking. The dull street was silent; the sound and stir of morning, alive elsewhere, reached it not; but the sky was clear and blue, and on that a...

In one of the many little suburbs which cling to the outskirts of London, there is a silent and grass-grown street, of aspect both quiet and quaint. The houses are crazy, old, a...

A week had passed over the Teapot, and, sitting in the back-parlour with Mary, who was busy sewing, Richard Jones dived deep into his books, and cast up his accounts. He allowed...

The rich man has his intellect, and its pleasures; he has his books, his studies, his club, his lectures, his excursions; he has foreign lands, splendid cities, galleries, museu...

It was late when Rachel reached home. She found her step-mother sitting up for her, rigid, amazed y indignant--so indignant, indeed, that though she rated Rachel soundly for her...

It was not merely in meditation that Rachel indulged, when she sought the little room. The divine did not banish the human from her heart; and she had friends known to her, but...

Hard indeed were the days that followed for Rachel Gray. The old quarrel had began anew. Why was she not like every one? Why did she pick up strange acquaintances?--above all, w...

Rachel went on; but she did not turn homewards. She left the broad and airy strait, where Mrs. Moxton lived. She entered a narrow one, long and gloomy. It led her into a large a...

And now, alas! fairly began the Teapot's downward course. Every effort of Richard Jones to rise, only made him sink the deeper. To use a worn out, though expressive phrase, he s...

We must be quite frank: Mr. Jones had not always made the one pound ten a week dear profit; and of course this affected all his calculations: the ten per cent for increase of ga...

The same cloud of trouble and sorrow that now darkened the daily life of Rachel Gray, soon gathered over her neighbours and friends. With boding and pain, she watched the coming...

Richard Jones still hoped: "Mary was so young!" He would hope. But it was not to be; he had but tasted the cup of his sorrows; to the dregs was he to drink it; the earthly idol...

The reader may easily imagine Jane and Joseph Saunders married. It was an old engagement Imagine them, too, retained from their wedding tour to Gravesend. It is evening; and on...

And did she read, indeed! Alas no! Her will fixed her eyes on the page, but her mind received not the impressions it conveyed. The sentences were vague and broken as images in a...

A time may come when the London churchyard shall be remembered as a thing that has been and is no more; but now who knows it not? Who need describe the serried gravestones that...

The morning was gray and dull. He had sat up all night by Mary; for Rachel, exhausted with fatigue, had been unable to come. Poor little Mary, her hour was nigh; she knew it, an...

Thomas Gray was not merely a paralyzed and helpless old man, he was also destitute. Little more than what sufficed to cover his current expenses did Rachel find in his dwelling;...

We were made to endure. A Heathen philosopher held the eight of the just man's suffering, worthy of the Gods, and Christianity knows nothing more beautiful, more holy, than the...

What airs little Mary took; how Jane taunted and twitted her, how Rachel had to interfere; how even Mrs. Brown chose to comment on the startling fact of a new grocer's shop, and...

For her excessive patience had of late rendered Mrs. Brown's violent temper wholly ungovernable. Irritated by the very meekness which met her wrath, she had, with the instinct o...

A new life now began for Rachel Gray. Like a plant long bent by adverse winds, she slowly recovered elasticity of spirit, and lightness of heart. What she might have been, but f...