Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker, by S. Weir Mitchell #2 in our series by S. Weir Mitchell
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Title: Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker
Author: S. Weir Mitchell
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6485] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 20, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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HUGH WYNNE
FREE QUAKER
Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington.
By S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D.
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
By HOWARD PYLE

[Frontispiece Illustration: "IS IT YES OR NO, DARTHEA?"]
[Transcriber's Note: The drawing depicts a man and woman riding on horseback side-by-side.]

PREFACE TO NINETEENTH EDITION
Since Hugh Wynne was published in book form in 1896, it has been many times reprinted, and now that again there is need for a new edition, I use a desired opportunity to rectify some mistakes in names, dates, and localities. These errors were of such a character as to pass unnoticed by the ordinary reader and disturb no one except the local archaeologist or those who propose to the novelist that he shall combine the accuracy of the historical scholar with the creative imagination of the writer of what, after all, is fiction.
Nevertheless, the desire of the scientific mind even in the novel is for all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years such winter leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life permitted, to collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk of the various types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned a hundred pages of these carefully gathered materials soon after I had found time, in a summer holiday, to write the book for which these notes were so industriously gathered.
It is probable that no historical novel was ever paid the compliment of the close criticism of details which greeted Hugh Wynne. I was most largely in debt for the pointing out of errors in names and localities to a review of my book in a journal devoted to the interest of one of the two divisions of the Society of Friends.
I deeply regretted at the time that my useful critic should have considered my novel as a deliberately planned attack on the views entertained by Friends. It was once again an example of the assumption that the characters of a novel in their opinions and talk represent the author's personal beliefs. I was told by my critic that John Wynne is presented as "the type of the typical character of the Friends." As well might Bishop Proudie be considered as representative of the members and views of the Church of England or Mr. Tulkinghorn of the English lawyer.
A man's course in life does not always represent simple obedience to the counsels of perfection implied in an accepted creed of conduct, but is modified by his own nature. He may therefore quite fail to secure from his beliefs that which they produce in more assimilative natures. Age softens some hard characters, but in John Wynne the early development of senile dementia deprived him of this chance. I drew a peculiar and happily a rare type of man who might have illustrated failure to get the best out of any creed.
The course of this great revolutionary struggle made or marred many men, and the way in which such a time affects character affords to the novel of history its most interesting material.
Erroneous statements in regard to the time and place of Friends' Meetings have been pointed out. As concerns these and the like, I may here state that the manuscript of my novel was read with care by a gentleman who was a birthright member of the Society and both by age and knowledge competent to speak. He remarked upon some of my technical errors in regard to the meetings and discipline of Friends, but