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134 pages

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. 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.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948773
Langue	English

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HOMESPUN TALES
By Kate Douglas Wiggin
Introduction
These three stories are now brought together underone cover because they have not quite outworn their welcome; but intheir first estate two of them appeared as gift-books, withdecorative borders and wide margins, a style not compatible withthe stringent economies of the present moment. Luckily they belongtogether by reason of their background, which is an imaginaryvillage, any village you choose, within the confines, or on theborders of York County, in the State of Maine.
In the first tale the river, not “Rose, ” is theprincipal character; no one realizes this better than I. If anauthor spends her summers on the banks of Saco Water it fills thelandscape. It flows from the White Mountains to the Atlantic in atempestuous torrent, breaking here and there into glorious falls ofamber glimpsed through snowy foam; its rapids dash through rockycliffs crowned with pine trees, under which blue harebells and rosycolumbines blossom in gay profusion. There is the glint of themirror-like lake above the falls, and the sound of the surgingfloods below; the witchery of feathery elms reflected in its clearsurfaces, and the enchantment of the full moon on its goldentorrents, never twice alike and always beautiful! How is one toforget, evade, scorn, belittle it, by leaving its charms untold;and who could keep such a river out of a book? It has flowedthrough many of mine and the last sound I expect to hear in lifewill be the faint, far-away murmur of Saco Water!
The old Tory Hill Meeting House bulks its way intothe foreground of the next story, and the old Peabody Pew (whichnever existed) has somehow assumed a quasi-historical aspect neverintended by its author. There is a Dorcas Society, and there is ameeting house; my dedication assures the reader of theseindubitable facts; and the Dorcas Society, in a season of temporarybankruptcy, succeeding a too ample generosity, did scrub the pewswhen there was no money for paint. Rumors of our strenuous, andsomewhat unique, activities spread through our parish to manyothers, traveling so far (even over seas) that we becameembarrassed at our easily won fame. The book was read and peopleoccasionally came to church to see the old Peabody Pew, ratherresenting the information that there had never been any Peabodys inthe parish and, therefore, there could be no Peabody Pew. Mattersbecame worse when I made, very reverently, what I suppose must becalled a dramatic version of the book, which we have played forseveral summers in the old meeting house to audiences far exceedingour seating capacity. Inasmuch as the imaginary love-tale of myso-called Nancy Wentworth and Justin Peabody had begun under theshadow of the church steeple, and after the ten years of partingthe happy reunion had come to them in the selfsame place, it waspossible to present their story simply and directly, withoutoffense, in a church building. There was no curtain, no stage, noscenery, no theatricalism. The pulpit was moved back, and fouryoung pine trees were placed in front of it for supposed Christmasdecoration. The pulpit platform, and the “wing pews” left vacantfor the village players, took the place of a stage; the two aislesserved for exits and entrances; and the sexton with three rings ofthe church bell, announced the scenes. The Carpet Committee of theDorcas Society furnished the exposition of the first act, whilesewing the last breadths of the new, hardly-bought ingrain carpet.The scrubbing of the pews ends the act, with dialogue concerningmen, women, ministers, church-members and their ways, including theutter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to make a livinganywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the church fortheir Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancyreturns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet inthe old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leavesof the hymn-book from which she has so often sung “By cool Siloam'sshady rill” with her lover in days gone by. He, still a failure,having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back tospend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim lightin the church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task ofcarpeting the Peabody Pew, so that it shall look as well as theothers at next day's services. The rest is easy to imagine. One candeny the reality of a book, but when two or three thousand peoplehave beheld Justin Peabody and Nancy Wentworth in the flesh, andhave seen the paint of the old Peabody Pew wiped with a damp cloth,its cushion darned and its carpet tacked in place, it is useless toargue; any more than it would be to deny the validity of the egg ofColumbus or the apple of William Tell.
As for “Susanna and Sue” the story would never havebeen written had I not as a child and girl been driven once a yearto the Shaker meeting at the little village of Alfred, sixteenmiles distant. The services were then open to the public, buteventually permission to attend them was withdrawn, because of thecareless and sometimes irreverent behavior of young people whoregarded the Shaker costumes, the solemn dances or marches, therhythmic movements of the hands, the almost hypnotic crescendo ofthe singing, as a sort of humorous spectacle. I learned to know thebrethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years went by, and oftenwent to the main house to spend a day or two as the guest ofEldress Harriet, a saint, if ever there was one, or, later, withdear Sister Lucinda.
The shining cleanliness and order, the frugality andindustry, the serenity and peace of these people, who had resignedthe world and “life on the plane of Adam, ” vowing themselves tocelibacy, to public confession of sins, and the holding of goods incommon, — all this has always had a certain exquisite and helpfulinfluence upon my thought, and Mr. W. D. Howells paid a far morebeautiful tribute to them in “The Undiscovered Country. ”
It is needless to say that I read every word of thebook to my Shaker friends before it was published. They took a deepinterest in it, evincing keen delight in my rather facetious butwholly imaginary portrait of “Brother Ansel, ” a “born Shaker, ”and sadly confessing that my two young lovers, “Hetty” and “Nathan,” who could not endure the rigors of the Shaker faith and fledtogether in the night to marry and join the world's people, — thatthis tragedy had often occurred in their community.
Here, then, are the three simple homespun tales. Ibelieve they are true to life as I see it. I only wish my readersmight hear the ripple of the Maine river running through them;breathe the fragrance of New England for-ests, and though never fora moment getting, through my poor pen, the atmosphere of Maine'srugged cliffs and the tang of her salt sea air, they might at leastbelieve for an instant that they had found a modest Mayflower inher pine woods.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. July, 1920.
ROSE O' THE RIVER
I. The Pine And the Rose
It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman,fresh from his dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside fromthe hut in the alder-bushes where he had made his morningtoilet.
An early ablution of this sort was not the custom ofthe farmers along the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house washardly a stone's throw from the water, and there was a clear, deepswimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would have tempted thebusiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too,Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on itsvery brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or besideit, or at least within sight or sound of it.
The immensity of the sea had always silenced andoverawed him, left him cold in feeling. The river wooed him,caressed him, won his heart. It was just big enough to love. It wasfull of charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden surprises.Its voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and moresubtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without strength,and when it was swollen with the freshets of the spring andbrimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could dash androar, boom and crash, with the best of them.
Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in theglory of the sunrise, with the Saco winding like a silver ribbonthrough the sweet loveliness of the summer landscape.
And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing itsmorning song, creating and nourishing beauty at every step of itsonward path. Cradled in the heart of a great mountain-range, itpursued its gleaming way, here lying silent in glassy lakes, thererushing into tinkling little falls, foaming great falls, andthundering cataracts. Scores of bridges spanned its width, but nosteamers flurried its crystal depths. Here and there a rough littlerowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in some quiet bendof the shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch, chub, ortrout caught the eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the clearwater, a fish carved in stone: here eels coiled in the muddy bottomof some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of the rocks, layfat, sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite untempted by, andwholly superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.
The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; itflowed along banks green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; itfell tempestuously over dams and fought its way between rockycliffs crowned with stately firs. It rolled past forests of pineand hemlock and spruce, now gentle, now terrible; for there is saidto be an Indian curse upon the Saco, whereby, with every great sun,the child of a paleface shall be drawn into its cruel depths.Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded its progress, theriver looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now leaden gray;but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its appointed way to thesea.
After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with amorning draught of beauty, Stephen went