ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasures"I don't think you would do for a doctor or a barrister: your character is too simple for success in a subtle profession. You could not humbug a hypochondriacal patient, or plead with passionate earnestness for a client whom you knew to be guilty."
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There are many of us who, from some deficiency in education or reasoning power, are unable to realize for ourselves the goodness of God, and such of us generally look to the parson for guidance, and take what he says for gospel.
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"The apostle puts knowledge before temperance. These men are intemperate because they despise knowledge."
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"The mania for gossip is a disease, like a dog's hunger for something putrescent."
After the psychological intensity of The Confessions of a Woman, I thought a lighter story might be refreshing. Having transcribed Transmigration by Mortimer Collins—a fascinating, anti-Darwinist reincarnation fantasy—I decided to consider other works of his [as the Encyclopædia Britannica once said, "he also wrote several capital novels"]. Towards the end of his life he wrote in collaboration with his wife Frances; The Village Comedy was completed by her after his death. His mild, winking literary style, filled with gentle commentary yet firmly set in Victorian values, comes across well in this work.
The text came from these scans of volumes I, II, and III of the 1878 edition, backed by these scans. I corrected any obvious typographical errors, standardized some inconsistent spellings, and updated some obsolete spellings.
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
October 17, 2026