 | The story of Kennett |  |
PROLOGUE.
I wish to dedicate this Story to you, not only because
some of you inhabit the very houses, and till the very fields
which I have given to the actors in it, but also because
many of you will recognize certain of the latter, and are
therefore able to judge whether they are drawn with the
simple truth at which I have aimed. You are, naturally,
the critics whom I have most cause to fear; but I do not
inscribe these pages to you with the design of purchasing
your favor. I beg you all to accept the fact as an acknowledgment
of the many quiet and happy years I have spent
among you; of the genial and pleasant relations into which
I was born, and which have never diminished, even when
I have returned to you from the farthest ends of the earth;
and of the use (often unconsciously to you, I confess,) which
I have drawn from your memories of former days, your
habits of thought and of life.
I am aware that truth and fiction are so carefully woven
together in this Story of Kennett, that you will sometimes
be at a loss to disentangle them. The lovely pastoral landscapes
which I know by heart, have been copied, field for
field and tree for tree, and these you will immediately
the originals of Sandy Flash and Deb. Smith; a few will
remember the noble horse which performed the service I
have ascribed to Roger; and the descendants of a certain
family will not have forgotten some of the pranks of Joe
and Jake Fairthorn. Many more than these particulars
are drawn from actual sources; but as I have employed
them with a strict regard to the purposes of the Story,
transferring dates and characters at my pleasure, you will
often, I doubt not, attribute to invention that which I owe
to family tradition. Herein, I must request that you will
allow me to keep my own counsel; for the processes which
led to the completed work extend through many previous
years, and cannot readily be revealed. I will only say that
every custom I have described is true to the time, though
some of them are now obsolete; that I have used no peculiar
word or phrase of the common dialect of the country
which I have not myself heard; and further, that I owe
the chief incidents of the last chapter, given to me on her
death-bed, to the dear and noble woman whose character
(not the circumstances of her life) I have endeavored to
reproduce in that of Martha Deane.
The country life of our part of Pennsylvania retains more
elements of its English origin than that of New England
or Virginia. Until within a few years, the conservative
influence of the Quakers was so powerful that it continued
to shape the habits even of communities whose religious
sentiment it failed to reach. Hence, whatever might be
selected as incorrect of American life, in its broader sense,
in these pages, is nevertheless locally true; and to this, at
least, all of you, my Friends and Neighbors, can testify.
In these days, when Fiction prefers to deal with abnormal
or morbid, the attempt to represent the elements of
life in a simple, healthy, pastoral community, has been to
me a source of uninterrupted enjoyment. May you read it
with half the interest I have felt in writing it!
| The story of Kennett | |