Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/64

 ultimately than her best friends and warmest admirers then expected. Her own expectations were so humble—probably from her two previous disappointments—that it has been said she saved something out of her income to meet any possible loss in the publication, a precaution which, it is needless to say, was quite uncalled for. She made one hundred and fifty pounds by it, and, on receiving the money, remarked that it was a great deal to earn for so little trouble!

Sense and Sensibility was originally called Elinor and Marianne, but it might as appropriately have been named The Dashwood Family, for it is really the history of one family, of whom two sister's are nominally the chief characters, but by no means the most interesting; and the other personages of the story, as was so usual with Jane Austen, only revolve round the centre characters. The John Dashwoods are unquestionably the most prominent, though not the most attractive, members of the family, and from the first conversation early in the book between John Dashwood and his wife, we feel that we know them thoroughly, and can safely predict their future conduct all through. John Dashwood is the only child of his father's first marriage; he inherits a good fortune from his mother, and has acquired another with his wife, besides which his only child has had a large one unexpectedly left to him by a relation. He has a stepmother and three half-sisters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret Dashwood, who, on the premature death of the father, are left very scantily provided for. On his death-bed, Mr. Dashwood earnestly entreats John Dashwood to do something for them, which the latter readily promises, all the more as the fortune which has come to his child had always been destined for the second