>>>  YOU ARE VIEWING A 200 LINE SAMPLE OF EBOOK# E06221  <<<

TITLE: THE STORY OF KENNETT
AUTHOR: BAYARD TAYLOR
EBOOK: E06221 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

THE STORY OF KENNETT

BY

BAYARD TAYLOR

PROLOGUE.

TO MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS OF KENNETT:

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 recognize. Many of you will have no difficulty in detecting
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 characters and psychological problems more
or less exceptional 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!

BAYARD TAYLOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE CHASE

CHAPTER II.
WHO SHALL HAVE THE BRUSH?

CHAPTER III.
MARY POTTER AND HER SON

CHAPTER IV.
FORTUNE AND MISFORTUNE

CHAPTER V.
GUESTS AT FAIRTHORN'S

CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW GILBERT

CHAPTER VII.
OLD KENNETT MEETING

CHAPTER VIII.
AT DR. DEANE'S

CHAPTER IX.
THE RAISING

CHAPTER X.
THE RIVALS

CHAPTER XI.
GUESTS AT POTTER'S

CHAPTER XII.
THE EVENTS OF AN EVENING

CHAPTER XIII.
TWO OLD MEN

CHAPTER XIV.
DOUBTS AND SURMISES

CHAPTER XV.
ALFRED BARTON BETWEEN TWO FIRES

CHAPTER XVI.
MARTHA DEANE

CHAPTER XVII.
CONSULTATIONS

CHAPTER XVIII.
SANDY FLASH REAPPEARS

CHAPTER XIX.
THE HUSKING FROLIC

CHAPTER XX.
GILBERT ON THE ROAD TO CHESTER

CHAPTER XXI.
ROGER REPAYS HIS MASTER

CHAPTER XXII.
MARTHA DEANE TAKES A RESOLUTION

CHAPTER XXIII.
A CROSS-EXAMINATION

CHAPTER XXIV.
DEB. SMITH TAKES A RESOLUTION

CHAPTER XXV.
TWO ATTEMPTS

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE LAST OF SANDY FLASH

CHAPTER XXVII.
GILBERT INDEPENDENT

CHAPTER XXVIII.
MISS LAVENDER MAKES A GUESS

CHAPTER XXIX.
MYSTERIOUS MOVEMENTS

CHAPTER XXX.
THE FUNERAL

CHAPTER XXXI.
THE WILL

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE LOVERS

CHAPTER XXXIII.
HUSBAND AND WIFE

CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE WEDDING

CHAPTER I.

THE CHASE.

At noon, on the first Saturday of March, 1796, there was an unusual stir
at the old Barton farm-house, just across the creek to the eastward, as
you leave Kennett Square by the Philadelphia stage-road. Any gathering
of the people at Barton's was a most rare occurrence; yet, on that day
and at that hour, whoever stood upon the porch of the corner house, in
the village, could see horsemen approaching by all the four roads which
there met. Some five or six had already dismounted at the Unicorn
Tavern, and were refreshing themselves with stout glasses of "Old Rye,"
while their horses, tethered side by side to the pegs in the long
hitching-bar, pawed and stamped impatiently. An eye familiar with the
ways of the neighborhood might have surmised the nature of the occasion
which called so many together, from the appearance and equipment of
these horses. They were not heavy animals, with the marks of
plough-collars on their broad shoulders, or the hair worn off their
rumps by huge breech-straps; but light and clean-limbed, one or two of
them showing signs of good blood, and all more carefully groomed than
usual.

Evidently, there was no "vendue" at the Barton farmhouse; neither a
funeral, nor a wedding, since male guests seemed to have been
exclusively bidden. To be sure, Miss Betsy Lavender had been observed to
issue from Dr. Deane's door, on the opposite side of the way, and turn
into the path beyond the blacksmith's, which led down through the wood
and over the creek to Barton's; but then, Miss Lavender was known to be
handy at all times, and capable of doing all things, from laying out a

<<<  END OF SAMPLE... (THE FULL EBOOK HAS 748057 TOTAL CHARACTERS)  >>>