Genre:

Short Fiction

Subjects:

Natural Law, Human Species, Ageing, Machinery

    Reflecting on his lack of wealth and failure to attract an eligible partner, the narrator wonders 'at the great law of natural equality which seems to level all mankind to one standard, notwithstanding all those artificial ones which we ourselves have raised' (46). He also describes Esther Olliver's father as 'a little shrivelled-up old gentleman, with a machine inside to keep him going' (44).

Reprinted:

Ritchie 1869