Sense and Sensibility, Volume the First, Chapters Twenty and Twenty-One

In which Mr. and Mrs. Palmer continue to be cheerfully silly and rudely critical, respectively; and we meet the elder and younger Miss Steeles, vulgarly inappropriate and shrewd but artless, also respectively; and in which you narrator realizes that this book is rather making up for the lack of female voices in Treasure Island.



Hey, lookit that! I actually did get one done early! Let's see if I can keep it up the rest of the week.

I've only got two short notes in this one, both contained in one of Mrs. Palmer's speeches about her dear husband. At 6:39, she says that he is "canvassing against the election," which just means campaigning. Shortly thereafter, around 7:08, she says that he states that if he's elected he "will never frank for" her. At least at that time, members of Parliament (or "MPs") were allowed to send mail with free postage if they signed their name on the back of the envelope, something which Mr. Palmer is apparently not willing to do for his wife.

Illustrations!

17:39 - Mischievous tricks.

25:57 - Drinking to her best affections.

If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, and high-res copies of the Thompson illustrations can be found in the British Library's Flickr stream. No reading ahead, though!