[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

PREFACE.

[figure description] Preface.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Preface. Page vi.[end figure description]

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
they 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

[figure description] Preface. Page vii.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

CONTENTS.

[figure description] Contents Page.[end figure description]

page