The Morgesons | Page 2

him, which made me
very happy. He accepted the story, and wrote me then, and afterwards,
letters of advice and suggestion. I think he saw through my mind, its
struggles, its ignorance, and its ambition. Also I got my guinea for my
pains. The Atlantic Monthly sent me a hundred dollars. I doubt but for

Mr. Lowell's interest and kindness I should ever have tried prose again.
I owe a debt of gratitude to him which I shall always give to his noble
memory.
My story did not set the river on fire, as stories are apt to do nowadays.
It attracted so little notice from those I knew, and knew of, that
naturally my ambition would have been crushed. Notwithstanding, and
saying nothing to anybody, I began "The Morgesons," and everywhere
I went, like Mary's lamb, my MS. was sure to go. Meandering along the
path of that family, I took them much to heart, and finished their record
within a year. I may say here, that the clans I marshaled for my pages
had vanished from the sphere of reality--in my early day the village
Squire, peerless in blue broadcloth, who scolded, advised, and helped
his poorer neighbors; the widows, or maidens, who accepting service
"as a favor," often remained a lifetime as friend as well as "help;" the
race of coast-wise captains and traders, from Maine to Florida, as acute
as they were ignorant; the rovers of the Atlantic and the Pacific, were
gone not to return. If with these characters I have deserved the name of
"realist," I have also clothed my skeletons with the robe of romance.
"The Morgesons" completed, and no objections made to its publication,
it was published. As an author friend happened to be with us, almost on
the day it was out, I gave it to him to read, and he returned it to me with
the remark that there were "a good many whiches in it." That there
were, I must own, and that it was difficult to extirpate them. I was
annoyed at their fertility. The inhabitants of my ancient dwelling place
pounced upon "The Morgesons," because they were convinced it would
prove to be a version of my relations, and my own life. I think one copy
passed from hand to hand, but the interest in it soon blew over, and I
have not been noticed there since.
"Two Men" I began as I did the others, with a single motive; the
shadow of a man passed before me, and I built a visionary fabric round
him. I have never tried to girdle the earth; my limits are narrow; the
modern novel, as Andrew Lang lately calls it,--with its love-making,
disquisition, description, history, theology, ethics,--I have no sprinkling
of. My last novel, "Temple House," was personally conducted, so far
that I went to Plymouth to find a suitable abode for my hero, Angus

Gates, and to measure with my eye the distance between the bar in the
bay and the shore, the scene of a famous wreck before the Revolution.
As my stories and novels were never in touch with my actual life, they
seem now as if they were written by a ghost of their time. It is to
strangers from strange places that I owe the most sympathetic
recognition. Some have come to me, and from many I have had letters
that warmed my heart, and cheered my mind. Beside the name of Mr.
Lowell, I mention two New England names, to spare me the fate of the
prophet of the Gospel, the late Maria Louise Pool, whose lamentable
death came far too early, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived to read
"The Morgesons" only, and to write me a characteristic letter. With
some slight criticism, he wrote, "Pray pardon my frankness, for what is
the use of saying anything, unless we say what we think?... Otherwise it
seemed to me as genuine and lifelike as anything that pen and ink can
do. There are very few books of which I take the trouble to have any
opinion at all, or of which I could retain any memory so long after
reading them as I do of 'The Morgesons.'"
Could better words be written for the send-off of these novels?
ELIZABETH STODDARD. New York, May 2nd, 1901.

TO MRS. KATHARINE HOOKER
OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
THESE NOVELS ARE DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL
REMEMBRANCE OF A KIND DEED
ELIZABETH STODDARD
CHAPTER I.
"That child," said my aunt Mercy, looking at me with indigo-colored
eyes, "is possessed."
When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers, by its knobs,

in order to reach the book-shelves above it, where my favorite work,
"The Northern Regions," was kept, together with "Baxter's Saints'
Rest," and other volumes of that sort, belonging to