Genre:

Short Fiction, Serial

Subjects:

Politics, Mathematics, Navigation

    The female narrator describes having travelled inside the mail coach with three gentlemen, two of whom were discussing their plans for reform. The narrator observes that 'crude reformers [..] almost universally leave the depravity of human nature out of their calculations. As if in computing the progress of a vessel through any given space of ocean, the calculator should forget to take account of opposing tides, and baffling winds' (388).