Homespun Tales. Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664595577

Table of Contents

       Introduction

       ROSE O' THE RIVER

       I. The Pine And the Rose

       II. “Old Kennebec”

       III. The Edgewood “Drive”

       IV. “Blasphemious Swearin'”

       V. The Game of Jackstraws

       VI. Hearts And Other Hearts

       VII. The Little House

       VIII. The Garden of Eden

       IX. The Serpent

       X. The Turquoise Ring

       XI. Rose Sees the World

       XII. Gold and Pinchbeck

       XIII. A Country Chevalier

       XIV. Housebreaking

       XV. The Dream Room

       THE OLD PEABODY PEW

       A Christmas Romance of a Country Church

       I.

       II.

       III.

       IV.

       V.

       VI.

       VII.

       VIII.

       SUSANNA AND SUE

       I. Mother Ann's Children

       II. A Son of Adam

       III. Divers Doctrines

       IV. Louisa's Mind

       V. The Little Quail Bird

       VI. Susanna Speaks in Meeting

       VII. “The Lower Plane”

       VIII. Concerning Backsliders

       IX. Love Manifold

       X. Brother and Sister

       XI. “The Open Door”

       XII. The Hills of Home

Introduction

       Table of Contents

      These three stories are now brought together under one cover because they have not quite outworn their welcome; but in their first estate two of them appeared as gift-books, with decorative borders and wide margins, a style not compatible with the stringent economies of the present moment. Luckily they belong together by reason of their background, which is an imaginary village, any village you choose, within the confines, or on the borders of York County, in the State of Maine.

      In the first tale the river, not “Rose,” is the principal character; no one realizes this better than I. If an author spends her summers on the banks of Saco Water it fills the landscape. It flows from the White Mountains to the Atlantic in a tempestuous torrent, breaking here and there into glorious falls of amber glimpsed through snowy foam; its rapids dash through rocky cliffs crowned with pine trees, under which blue harebells and rosy columbines blossom in gay profusion. There is the glint of the mirror-like lake above the falls, and the sound of the surging floods below; the witchery of feathery elms reflected in its clear surfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on its golden torrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one to forget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold; and who could keep such a river out of a book? It has flowed through many of mine and the last sound I expect to hear in life will be the faint, far-away murmur of Saco Water!

      The old Tory Hill Meeting House bulks its way into the foreground of the next story, and the old Peabody Pew (which never existed) has somehow assumed a quasi-historical aspect never intended by its author. There is a Dorcas Society, and there is a meeting house; my dedication assures the reader of these indubitable facts; and the Dorcas Society, in a season of temporary bankruptcy, succeeding a too ample generosity, did scrub the pews when there was no money for paint. Rumors of our strenuous, and somewhat unique, activities