No light literature,--that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours, elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind.

She took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the rest, for she was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read.

To her surprise, the first passage she opened was singularly interesting, though the title was nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of Padua in the Sixteenth Century." It related to that singular epoch of terror in Italy when some mysterious disease, varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all remedy, and long defied all conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the heads of families, father and husband; rarely women.

In one city, seven hundred husbands perished, but not one wife! The disease was poison.

The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier discoverers of the true cause of this household epidemic.
He had been a chief authority in a commission of inquiry.