Read it through once

As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed eulogy of Woman—simply Woman in general, or perhaps as an Institution—wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her voice. He says it ‘fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed by every rill.’ It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After the eulogy he takes up his real work, and the novel begins. It begins in the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill.