Its one touch of humor is where Jerome Carey curses his fate in being compelled to live in that desolate land in `` the picturesque language permissible in the far Northwest . '' Self-sacrifice , as the real basis of happiness , is a favorite theme in Miss Montgomery 's fiction . It is raised to the nth power in the story entitled , `` In Her Selfless Mood , '' where an ugly , misshapen girl devotes her life and renounces marriage for the sake of looking after her weak and selfish half-brother . The same spirit is found in `` Only a Common Fellow , '' who is haloed with a certain splendor by renouncing the girl he was to marry in favor of his old rival , supposed to have been killed in France , but happily delivered from that tragic fate . Miss Montgomery loves to introduce a little child or a baby as a solvent of old feuds or domestic quarrels . In `` The Dream Child , '' a foundling boy , drifting in through a storm in a dory , saves a heart-broken mother from insanity . In `` Jane 's Baby , '' a baby-cousin brings reconciliation between the two sisters , Rosetta and Carlotta , who had not spoken for twenty years because `` the slack-twisted '' Jacob married the younger of the two . Happiness generally lights up the end of her stories , however tragic they may set out to be . In `` The Son of His Mother , '' Thyra is a stern woman , as `` immovable as a stone image . '' She had only one son , whom she worshipped ; `` she never wanted a daughter , but she pitied and despised all sonless women . '' She demanded absolute obedience from Chester -- not only obedience , but also utter affection , and she hated his dog because the boy loved him : `` She could not share her love even with a dumb brute . '' When Chester falls in love , she is relentless toward the beautiful young girl and forces Chester to give her up . But a terrible sorrow brings the old woman and the young girl into sympathy , and unspeakable joy is born of the trial . Happiness also comes to `` The Brother who Failed . '' The Monroes had all been successful in the eyes of the world except Robert : one is a millionaire , another a college president , another a famous singer . Robert overhears the old aunt , Isabel , call him a total failure , but , at the family dinner , one after another stands up and tells how Robert 's quiet influence and unselfish aid had started them in their brilliant careers , and the old aunt , wiping the tears from her eyes , exclaims : `` I guess there 's a kind of failure that 's the best success . '' In one story there is an element of the supernatural , when Hester , the hard older sister , comes between Margaret and her lover and , dying , makes her promise never to become Hugh Blair 's wife , but she comes back and unites them . In this , Margaret , just like the delightful Anne , lives up to the dictum that `` nothing matters in all God 's universe except love . '' The story of the revival at Avonlea has also a good moral . There is something in these continued Chronicles of Avonlea , like the delicate art which has made `` Cranford '' a classic : the characters are so homely and homelike and yet tinged with beautiful romance !
You feel that you are made familiar XXXXX a real town and its real inhabitants ; you learn to love them and sympathize with them .
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