After "wading through pages of tiresome repetition, to get at the gist of nothing in particular " Clementine Edith Aiken wrote her 1876 The Days We Live In to "paint women and men as I have found them, and to picture human attributes and passions as I have known them, I would have my pen dipped in the glow of a summer sunset, or the lowering gloom of a thunder-charged storm.