EXTRACT: CHAPTER I. HELEN LINGARD. A swift, gray November wind had taken every chimney of the house for an organ-pipe, and was roaring in them all at once, quelling the more distant and varied noises of the woods, which moaned and surged like a sea. Helen Lingard had not been out all day. The morning, indeed, had been fine, but she had been writing a long letter to her brother Leopold at Cambridge, and had put off her walk in the neighbouring park till after luncheon, and in the meantime the wind had risen, and brought with it a haze that threatened rain. She was in admirable health, had never had a day's illness in her life, was hardly more afraid of getting wet than a young farmer, and enjoyed wind, especially when she was on horseback. Yet as she stood looking from her window, across a balcony where shivered more than one autumnal plant that ought to have been removed a week ago, out upon the old-fashioned garden and meadows beyond, where each lonely tree bowed with drifting garments-I was going to say, like a suppliant, but it was AWAY from its storming enemy-she did not feel inclined to go out. That she was healthy was no reason why she should be unimpressible, any more than that good temper should be a reason for indifference to the behaviour of one's friend. She always felt happier in a new dress, when it was made to her mind and fitted her body; and when the sun shone she was lighter-hearted than when it rained: I had written MERRIER, but Helen was seldom merry, and had she been made aware of the fact, and questioned why, would have answered-Because she so seldom saw reason. She was what all her friends called a sensible girl; but, as I say, that was no reason why she should be an insensible girl as well, and be subject to none of the influences of the weather. She did feel those influences, and therefore it was that she turned away from the window with the sense, rather than the conviction, that the fireside in her own room was rendered even, more attractive by the unfriendly aspect of things outside and the roar in the chimney, which happily was not accompanied by a change in the current of the smoke. George MacDonald is a British writer and Calvinist pastor born December 10, 1824 in Huntly and died September 18, 1905 in Ashtead. His literary work, now little known in France, has been admired, among others W. H. Auden, G. K. Chesterton and J. R. R. Tolkien. C. S. Lewis considered him his "master" Sphère d'influence MacDonald servit aussi comme mentor de Lewis Carroll (le nom d'écrivain du Révérend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson); suivant l'avis de MacDonald de faire lire Alice aux enfants de ce dernier, et la réception enthousiaste d'Alice au pays des merveilles par les trois jeunes filles de MacDonald, convainquirent Carroll de proposer Alice à la publication. Carroll, un des photographes les plus excellents de l'époque victorienne, créa aussi des portraits photographiques des filles et de leur frère Greville. MacDonald fut aussi ami avec John Ruskin et servit comme entremetteur dans la longue histoire d'amour de Ruskin avec Rose la Touche. MacDonald connut de nombreuses personnalités littéraires de l'époque; une photo de groupe conservée le montre en compagnie d'Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, John Ruskin, George Henry Lewes, et William Makepeace Thackeray. Pendant son séjour en Amérique il fut ami avec Longfellow et Walt Whitman.
