Status Updates From Anne (Rediscovered Fiction ...

Things are getting a little too melodramatic...

This novel starts slowly in the 1860s Michigan and introduces plain Anne Douglas and her musical father William. When he passes she begins to explore the world. She comes under the cold fingers of her Aunt and of Miss Vanhorn. Anne's beautiful voice brings Helen into her life as a friend and her antithesis.

The men especially found small pleasure in sitting on the ground; besides, a distinct consciousness that the attitude was not becoming.
For the American does not possess a taste for throwing himself heartily
down upon Mother Earth. He can camp; he can hunt, swim, ride, walk, use
Indian clubs, play base-ball, drive, row, sail a yacht, or even guide a
balloon; but when it comes to grass, give him a bench.

He was one of a small and unimportant class in the United States, which would be very offensive to citizens at large if it came in contact with them; but it seldom does. To this class there is no city in America save New York, and New York itself is only partially endurable.

But it is, more than all else, the enormous strength which ridicule as an influence possesses in America that makes him [the American man] what he is; he shrinks from the slightest appearance of "fine talking," lest the ever-present harpies of mirth should swoop down and feed upon his vitals.

"I take great care about light, which I consider an influence in our households too much neglected. The hideous white glare in most American breakfast-rooms on snowy winter mornings has often made
me shudder when I have been visiting my friends; only the extremely
vigorous can enjoy this sharp contact with the new day."

It is only in "books for the young" that poorly clad girls are found leading whole schools by the mere power of intellectual or moral supremacy.