The Minister's Wooing

WE suppose the heroine of a novel, among other privileges and immunities, has a prescriptive right to her own private boudoir, where, as a French writer has it, ‘she appears lik...

NOTHING is more striking in the light and shadow of the human drama than to compare the inner life and thoughts of an elevated and silent nature, with the thoughts and plans whi...

AT the call of her mother, Mary hurried into the ‘best room, with a strange discomposure of spirit she had never felt before. From childhood, her love for James had been so deep...

WILL our little Mary really fall in love with the Doctor?—The question reaches us in anxious tones from all the circle of our readers; and what especially shocks us is, that gra...

Between her and her two best friends had fallen a curtain of silence. The subject that filled all her thoughts could not be named between them. The Doctor often looked at her pa...

AT the period of which we are speaking, no name in the new republic was associated with ideas of more brilliant promise, or invested with a greater prestige of popularity and su...

WE have said before, what we now repeat, that it is impossible to write a story of New England life and manners for superficial thought or shallow feeling. They who would fully...

BY six o’clock in the morning, Miss Prissy came out of the best room to the breakfast-table, with the air of a general who has arranged a campaign, her face glowing with satisfa...

MARY returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had faded, and the silver moon, round and fair, was rising behind the thick boughs of the apple-trees. She sat dow...

MR. ZEBEDEE MARVYN, the father of James, was the sample of an individuality so purely the result of New England society and education that he must be embodied in our story as a...

THERE is no word in the English language more unceremoniously and indefinitely kicked and cuffed about, by what are called sensible people, than the word _romance_. When Mr. Smi...

THE Doctor went immediately to his study and put on his best coat and his wig, and, surmounting them by his cocked hat, walked manfully out of the house, with his gold-headed ca...

AS, for example, the breakfast. It is six o’clock,—the hired men and oxen are gone,—the breakfast-table stands before the open kitchen-door, snowy with its fresh cloth, the old...

AS I before remarked, Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited company to tea. Strictly speaking, it is necessary to begin with the creation of the world, in order to give a full account o...

IT is a hard condition of our existence here, that every exaltation must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below, but only such glimpses and faint showin...

IT is seldom that man and woman come together in intimate association, unless influences are at work more subtle and mysterious than the subjects of them dream. Even in cases wh...

MEANWHILE wedding proceedings were going on at the cottage with that consistent vigour with which Yankee people always drive operations when they know precisely what they are ab...

When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled which end of it to begin at. You have a whole corps of people to introduce that _you_ know and your reader doesn’t; and one t...

MRS. SCUDDER kissed her daughter, and left her. After a moment’s thought, Mary gathered the long silky folds of hair around her head, and knotted them for the night. Then leanin...

A QUIET, maiden-like place was Mary’s little room. The window looked out under the overarching boughs of a thick apple orchard, now all in a blush with blossoms and pink-tipped...

THE hens cackled drowsily in the barn-yard of the white Marvyn-house; in the blue June-afternoon sky sported great sailing islands of cloud, whose white, glistening heads looked...

IN the course of a day or two, a handsome carriage drew up in front of Mrs. Scudder’s cottage, and a brilliant party alighted. They were Colonel and Madame de Frontignac, the Ab...

WE know it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a new-married pair as they recede from the altar, but we cannot but hope our readers may have by this time enough of interest...

OF the events which followed this scene, we are happy to give our readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could furnish, by transcribing for their edification...

‘AND now, Mary,’ said Mrs. Scudder, at five o’clock the next morning, ‘to-day, you know, is the doctor’s fast, and so we won’t get any dinner, and it will be a good time to do u...

A DAY or two after, Madame de Frontignac and Mary went out to gather shells and seaweed on the beach. It was four o’clock; and the afternoon sun was hanging in the sultry sky of...

THE next morning, before the early dews had yet dried off the grass, Mary started to go and see her friend Mrs. Marvyn. It was one of those charming, invigorating days, familiar...

MARY revolved the affairs of her friend in her mind during the night. The intensity of the mental crisis through which she herself had just passed, had developed her in many inw...

THE announcement of the definite engagement of two such bright particular stars in the hemisphere of the Doctor’s small parish excited the interest that such events usually crea...

THE Doctor sat at his study-table. It was evening, and the slant beams of the setting sun shot their golden arrows through the healthy purple clusters of lilacs that veiled the...

THE sun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and lilac tints, and savins and junipers...

THE summer passed over the cottage, noiselessly, as our summers pass. There were white clouds walking in saintly troops over blue mirrors of sea,—there were purple mornings, cho...

OUR fathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of nature, because they had the idea that when the...

‘MY DEAREST MARY,—I have lived through many wonderful scenes since I saw you last; my life has been so adventurous that I scarcely know myself when I think of it. But it is not...

BETWEEN three and four the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary’s room stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which bro...

THE domesticating of Madame de Frontignac as an inmate of the cottage, added a new element of vivacity to that still and unvaried life. One of the most beautiful traits of Frenc...

‘_Enfin, chère Sibylle_,’ said Madame de Frontignac when Mary came out of the room with her cheeks glowing and her eyes flashing with a still unsubdued light. ‘_Te voilà encore!...

MARY returned to the house with her basket of warm, fresh eggs, which she set down mournfully upon the table. In her heart there was one conscious want and yearning, and that wa...

WELL, let us proceed to tell how the eventful evening drew on,—how Mary, by Miss Prissy’s care, stood at last in a long-waisted gown flowered with rosebuds and violets, opening...

WHEN Miss Prissy left the room the Doctor sat down by the table, and covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined nature; and he had just come to one...

Mary dressed herself in white—her hands trembling with unusual agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted...

THE next day broke calm and fair. The robins sang remorselessly in the apple-tree, and were answered by bobolink, oriole, and a whole tribe of ignorant little bits of feathered,...