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THE STORY OF THE GIRL FORGER.
It is a common thing for writers of a certain class, when they want to
produce the feeling of wonder in their readers, to introduce some
frantic action, and then to account for it by letting out the secret
that the actor was mad. The trick is not so necessary as it seems, for
the strength of human passions is a potentiality only limited by
experience; and so it is that a sane person may under certain stimulants
do the maddest thing in the world. The passion itself is always true--it
is only the motive that may be false; and therefore it is that in
narrating for your amusement, perhaps I may add instruction, the
following singular story--traces of the main parts of which I got in the
old books of a former procurator-fiscal--I assume that there was no more
insanity in the principal actor, Euphemia, or, as she was called, Effie
Carr, when she brought herself within the arms of the law, than there is
in you, when now you are reading the story of her strange life. She was
the only daughter of John Carr, a grain merchant, who lived in Bristo
Street. It would be easy to ascribe to her all the ordinary and
extraordinary charms that are thought so necessary to embellish
heroines; but as we are not told what these were in her case, we must be
contented with the assurance that nature had been kind enough to her to
give her power over the hearts of men.
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