University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

If it be true, as some have said, that a secret is safer in a preface
than elsewhere, it would be worse than folly for me to waste the
“midnight oil,” in the manufacture of an article which no one
would read, and which would serve no purpose, save the adding of a
page or so to a volume perhaps already too large. But I do not
think so. I wot of a few who, with a horror of anything savoring
of humbug, wade industriously through a preface, be it never so
lengthy, hoping therein to find the moral, without which the story
would, of course, be valueless. To such I would say, seek no further,
for though I claim for “'Lena Rivers,” a moral—yes, half a dozen
morals, if you please—I shall not put them in the preface, as I prefer
having them sought after, for what I have written I wish to have
read.

Reared among the rugged hills of the Bay State, and for a time
constantly associated with a class of people known the wide world
over as Yankees, it is no more than natural that I should often write
of the places and scenes with which I have been the most familiar.
In my delineations of New England character I have aimed to copy
from memory, and in no one instance, I believe, have I overdrawn
the picture; for among the New England mountains there lives many
a “Grandma Nichols,” a “Joel Slocum,” or a “Nancy Scovandyke,”
while the wide world holds more than one 'Lena, with her high
temper, extreme beauty, and rare combination of those qualities
which make the female character so lovely.

Nearly the same remarks will also apply to my portraitures of
Kentucky life and character, for it has been my good fortune to

spend a year and a half in that state; and in my descriptions of
country scenes and country life, I have with a few exceptions copied
from what I saw. Mrs. Livingstone and Mrs. Graham are characters
found everywhere, while the impulsive John Jr., and the generous-hearted
Durward, represent a class of individuals who belong
more exclusively to the “sunny south.”

I have endeavored to make this book both a good and an interesting
one, and if I have failed in my attempt, it is too late to remedy
it now; and, such as it is, I give it to the world, trusting that the
same favor and forbearance which have been awarded to my other
works, will also be extended to this.