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The story begins in letters, a method of story-telling which was the legacy of Richardson’s popularity and this device is again employed in the second volume (Part VII). Wilhelmine Arend is one of those whom sentimentalism seized like a maddening pestiferous disease. We read of her that she melted into tears when her canary bird lost a feather, that she turned white and trembled when Dr. Braun hacked worms to pieces in conducting a biological experiment. On one occasion she refused to drive home, as this would take the horses out in the noonday sun and disturb their noonday meal, an exorbitant sympathy with brute creation which owes its popularity to Yorick’s ass. It is not necessary here to relate the whole story. Wilhelmine’s excessive sentimentality estranges her from her husband, a
The advice of Drs. Braun and Irwin is especially significant in its sane characterization of Wilhelmine’s mental disorders, and the observations upon “Empfindsamkeit” which are scattered through the book are trenchant, and often markedly clever. Wilhelmine holds sentimental converse with three kindred spirits in succession, Webson, Dittmar, and Geissing. The first reads touching tales aloud to her and they two unite their tears, a
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