Clovernook, or, Recollections of our neighborhood in the west

Front matter

THE TISCH LIBRARY AT TUFTS UNIVERSITY

J fusion tliat came with it. Clarissa, for pity's sake, be reasonable, and don't let any hi^h-hown notion of duty mislead yon in this business. Come what may, I shall never marry Lady deraldiue. All possibility of that is over. Take back those words, Clary, ' Even if I loved you.' Tell me that you do love me, as I have hoped and dreamed — as I dared to believe sometimes at Hale, when my wedding-day was .so near that I seemed like some wretch bound to the wheel, for whom there is no possibility of escape. That is all over now, darling. To all intents and purposes I am free. Confess that you love me." This was said half tenderly, half imperiously — with the air of a conqueror accustomed to easy triumphs, an air which this man's experience had made natural to him. ''Come, Clarissa, think how many miles I have traveled for the sake of this one stolen half hour. Don't be so inexorable."

He looked down at her with a smile on his face, not very much alarmed by her obduracy. It seemed to him only a new form of feminine eccentricity. Here was a woman who actually could resist him for ten minutes at a stretch — him, George Fairfax !

Preface

The pastoral life of our country has not been a favorite subject of illustration by painters, poets, or writers of romance. Perhaps it has been regarded as wanting in the elements of beauty; perhaps it has been thought too passionless and even; or it may have been deemed too immediate and familiar. I have had little opportunity for its observation in the eastern and northern states, and in the south there is no such life, and in the far west where pioneers are still busy with felling the opposing trees, it is not yet time for the reed's music; but in the interior of my native state, which was a wilderness when first my father went to it, and is now crowned with a dense and prosperous population, there is surely as much in the simple manners, and the little histories every day revealed, to interest us in humanity, as there can be in those old empires where the press of tyrannous vi PREFACE.

laws and the deadening influence of hereditary acquiescence necessarily destroy the best life of society.

Without a thought of making a book, I began to recall some shadows and sunbeams that fell about me as I came up to womanhood, incidents for the most part of so little apparent moment or significance that they who live in what is called the world would scarcely have marked them had they been detained with me while they were passing, and before I was aware, the record of my memories grew to all I now have printed.

Looking over the proof sheets, as from day to day fhey have come from my publisher, the thought has frequently been suggested that such experiences as I have endeavored to describe will fail to interest the inhabitants of cities, where, however much there may be of pity there is surely little of sympathy for the poor and humble, and perhaps still less of faith in their capacity for those finer feelings which are too often deemed the blossoms of a high and fashionable culture. The masters of literature who at any time have attempted the exhibition of rural life, have, with few exceptions, known scarcely anything of it from participation, and however brilliant may have been their pictures, therefore, they have seldom been true. Perhaps in their extravagance has been their greatest charm. For myself, I confess I have no invention, and I am altogether too poor an artist to dream of

PREFACE. vn

any success which may not be won by the simplest fidelity. I believe that for these sketches I may challenge of competent witnesses at least this testimony, that the circumstances have a natural and probable air which should induce their reception as honest relations unless there is conclusive evidence against them. Having this merit, they may perhaps interest if they do not instruct readers who have regarded the farming class as essentially different and inferior, and entitled only to that peculiar praise they are accustomed to receive in the resolutions of political conventions.

Contents

PAOB

Preface ••• T

My Grandfather IS