The Greek myth concerning Demophoon embodies a valuable truth, which the literary career of Edna Earl was destined to exemplify. Harsh critics, like disguised Ceres, plunged the young author into the flames; and fortunately for her, as no short-sighted, loving Metanira snatched her from the fiery ordeal, she ultimately obtained the boon of immortality. Her regular contributions to the magazine enhanced her reputation, and broadened the sphere of her influence.
Profoundly impressed by the conviction that she held her talent in trust, she worked steadily, looking neither to the right nor left, but keeping her eyes fixed upon that day when she should be called to render an account to Him who would demand His own with interest. Instead of becoming flushed with success, she grew daily more cautious, more timid, lest inadvertence or haste should betray her into errors. Consequently as the months rolled away, each magazine article seemed an improvement on the last, and lifted her higher in public favor. The blacksmith's grandchild had become a power in society.
Feeling that a recluse life would give her only partial glimpses of that humanity which she wished to study, she moved in the circle of cultivated friends who now eagerly stretched out their arms to receive her; and "keeping herself unspotted from the world," she earnestly scrutinized social leprosy, and calmly watched the tendency of American thought and feeling.
Among philosophic minds she saw an inclination to ignore the principles of such systems as Sir William Hamilton's, and to embrace the modified and subtle materialism of Buckle and Mill, or the gross atheism of Buchner and Moleschott. Positivism in philosophy and pre- Raphaelitism in art, confronted her in the ranks of the literary,-- lofty idealism seemed trodden down--pawed over by Carlyle's "Monster Utilitaria."
When she turned to the next social stratum she found altars of mammon-groves of Baal, shining Schoe Dagonset up by business men and women of fashion. Society appeared intent only upon reviving the offering to propitiate evil spirits; and sometimes it seemed thickly sprinkled with very thinly disguised refugee Yezidees, who, in the East, openly worshipped the Devil.
Statesmen were almost extinct in America--a mere corporal's guard remained, battling desperately to save the stabbed constitution from howling demagogues and fanatics, who raved and ranted where Washington, Webster, and Calhoun had once swayed a free and happy people. The old venerated barriers and well-guarded outposts, which decorum and true womanly modesty had erected on the frontiers of propriety, were swept away in the crevasse of sans souci manners that threatened to inundate the entire land; and latitudinarianism in dress and conversation was rapidly reducing the sexes to an equality, dangerous to morals and subversive of all chivalric respect for woman.