Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the originaldocument have been preserved.
On page 16, "bran-new" may be a typo for "brand-new".
Constance Cary Harrison
A Virginia Cousin
& Bar Harbor
Tales
By
Mrs Burton Harrison
M D CCC XCV
Lamson Wolffe and Cō
Boston and New York
Copyright, 1895,
By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co
All rights reserved
Note by the Author
The little story "A Virginia Cousin," hereput into print for the first time, is in somesort a tribute offered by a long-exiled child of theSouth to her native soil. It is also a transcriptof certain phases of that life in the metropoliswhich has been pooh-poohed by some critics astrivially undeserving of a chronicler, but fortunatehitherto in finding a few readers willing to concedeas much humanity to the "heroine in satin"as to the "confidante in linen."
Of the other contents of this volume, "Out ofSeason" made its first appearance some time agoin Two Tales, and "On Frenchman's Bay" waspublished in The Cosmopolitan Magazine.
C. C. H.
New York,
November, 1895
A Virginia Cousin
Chapter I
Mr. Theodore Vance Townsendawoke to the light of a spring morningin New York, feeling at odds withthe world. The cause for this state ofvariance with existing circumstances wasnot at sight apparent. He was young,good-looking, well-born, well-mannered,and, to support these claims to favorableconsideration, had come into the fortunesof a father and two maiden aunts,—apiece of luck that had, however, notsecured for him the unqualified approbationof his fellow-citizens.
Joined to the fact that, upon first leavingcollege, some years before, he had leda few cotillons at New York balls, hiswealth and leisure had brought uponTownsend the reproach of the metropolitanpress to the extent that nothing shortof his committing suicide would have inducedit to look upon anything he did asin earnest.4
With an inherited love of letters, he haddabbled in literature so far as to write andpublish a book of verse, of fair merit,which, however, had been received withtumultuous rhapsodies of satire by the professionalcritics. The style and title of"Laureate of the 400," applied in thisconnection, had indeed clung to him andmade life hateful in his sight. To escapeit and the other rubs of unoccupied solvency,he had made many journeys intoforeign countries, had gone around theglobe, and, in due course, had always cometo the surface in New York again, with asort of doglike attachment to the place ofhis birth that would not wear away.
Of the society he was familiar with,Vance was profoundly weary. Of domestict