Westways: A Village Chronicle

On the far side of the highroad Westways slumbered. Only in the rector's small house were lights burning. The town was in absolute darkness. Westways went to bed early. A please...

Penhallow had gravely told John that in his absence he must look after the stables and the farm, so that now he had for the first time in his life responsibilities. The horses a...

John's intimacy with the Squire prospered. Leila had been a gay comrade, but not as yet so interested as to tempt him to discussion of the confusing politics of the day. "She ha...

While the two maids from Westways waited on the family at breakfast, the guest was pleased to express himself favourably in regard to the coffee and the corn bread. John being l...

When Leila sat upon the upper deck of the great Hudson River steamer, she was in a condition of excitement natural to an imaginative nature unused to travel. Her mind was like a...

The difficult lessons on the use of snow-shoes took up day after day, until weary but at last eager he followed her tireless little figure far into the more remote woods. "What'...

In the early days of May the Squire began to rebuild the parsonage, and near by it a large room for Sunday school and town-meetings. Ann desired to add a library-room for the to...

When John was eager to hear what Leila wrote, his aunt laughed and said, "As you know, there is always a word of remembrance for you, but her letters would hardly interest you....

"Yes, every four years we settle down to the enjoyment of the belief that now everything will go right, or if we are of those who lost the fight, then there is the comfort of th...

April passed, the arbutus fragrance was gone, while the maples were putting forth ruddy buds which looked like a prophecy of the distant autumn and made gay with colour the youn...

Penhallow selected two letters postmarked West Point, and opening one as he went in to the breakfast-room, said, "My dear, it is rather satisfactory--quite as much as could be e...

Penhallow himself drove his guest to meet the night express to the East, and well pleased with his day returned to find his wife talking with Rivers and John. He sat down with t...

It was late in October and ten at night, when Leila with her uncle was endeavouring to discover on one of the large maps, then so much in demand, the situation of the many small...

The effort to crush Lee's army by a frontal attack led to the disastrous defeat of Cold Harbor, and Grant who was never personally routed resolved to throw his army south of the...

Through the winter of 1863-4 at Grey Pine things remained unaltered, and McGregor concluded that there was no hope for happier change. Rare letters came from John Penhallow to h...

It was now four days since John's sentence had been pronounced, and not to be allowed to swim in the heat of a hot September added to the severity of the penalty. The heat as us...

The winter of 1862-63 went by with Sherman's defeat at Vicksburg and Rosecrans's inconclusive battle of Stone River. The unpopular Conscription Act in February, 1863, and last o...

Through the great heat of July, 1862, the war went on its inconclusive way. In Westways, as elsewhere, the call of the people's President for three hundred thousand men was felt...

Rivers gathered no comfort from a consultation of surgeons, who talked of the long-lasting effects of concussion of the brain. Made careful by the sad change he had observed in...

It was near to seven when he went down to his parked guns, seeing as he went that the ways were kept clear, and finding ready hot coffee and broiled chicken.

John was the first to return to the outer world. He stood still, seeing the horse on its legs, Billy unharnessing, Leila for an instant lost to sight. The boy was scared. In his...

The bustle and folly of a rummage-sale was once in every two or three years a frolic altogether pleasant to quiet Westways. It enabled Ann Penhallow and other wise women to get...

When late in March Grant about to move left the engineer brigade at City Point, the need to corduroy the rain-soaked roads called some of the corps to the front, and among them...

The widespread disapproval at the North of the Dred Scott Decision was somewhat less manifest in the middle months of the year because of the general financial distress, which d...

Leila Grey never forgot the month which followed. Penhallow was mercifully spared the sight of the drama of hysteria, and when not at the mills went about the house and farm lik...

Saluting the Commander-in-Chief, Penhallow turned away in absent mood thinking of the burdened man who had passed from sight into the White House. As he crossed Lafayette Square...

A half hour later John sat alone in the library. He had much to disturb a young man trained to obey and at need command, and was feeling the responsibility of an unusual positio...

In her room she went straight to the long cheval glass and looked at Leila Grey. "So, he will never ask me again?" The mirror reported a quite other answer. "Mark Rivers once sa...

A week later Ann Penhallow was told that she might see her husband. She entered his bedroom with timidity. "Oh, Ann, my most dear Ann!" he cried, as she kissed him. His expressi...

Before the period of which I write, the county and town had unfailingly voted the Democratic ticket. But for half a decade the unrest of the cities reflected in the journals had...

The first Penhallow crossed the Alleghanies long before the War for Independence and on the frontier of civilisation took up land where the axe was needed for the forest and the...

As the trains went northward crowded with more or less damaged officers and men, John Penhallow in his faded engineer uniform showed signs of renewed vitality. He chatted in his...

Late on Christmas morning of this year 1864, Penhallow with no duty on his hands saw with satisfaction the peacemaking efforts of the winter weather. A thin drizzle of cold rain...

The figure of Lincoln had been set on the by-ways of State politics by his debate with Douglas. His address in New York in February of 1860 set him on the highways of the nation...