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Frontispiece C.XXV.P.233. >Sampson Low, Son & Co. Septr. 20th. 1859.

THE
MINISTER’S WOOING.

BY H. BEECHER STOWE,
AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN,” “SUNNY MEMORIES,” ETC.




WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY PHIZ.




LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, SON, & CO., 47 LUDGATE HILL.
1859.

[The Author reserves the right of translation.]



INTRODUCTION.

The author has endeavoured in this story to paint a style oflife and manners which existed in New England in the earlierdays of her national existence.

Some of the principal characters are historic: the leadingevents of the story are founded on actual facts, although theauthor has taken the liberty to arrange and vary them forthe purposes of the story.

The author has executed the work with a reverential tendernessfor those great and religious minds who laid in NewEngland the foundations of many generations, and for thoseinstitutions and habits of life from which, as from a fruitfulgerm, sprang all the present prosperity of America.

Such as it is, it is commended to the kindly thoughts of thatBritish fireside from which the fathers and mothers of Americafirst went out to give to English ideas and institutions anew growth in a new world.

H. B. STOWE.

18 Montague Street, Russell Square,
August 25, 1859.


[1]

THE MINISTER’S WOOING.


CHAPTER I.

Mrs. Katy Scudder had invited Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Jones, andDeacon Twitchel’s wife to take tea with her on the afternoon ofJune second, A. D. 17—.

When one has a story to tell, one is always puzzled which endof it to begin at. You have a whole corps of people to introducethat you know and your reader doesn’t; and one thing so presupposesanother, that, whichever way you turn your patchwork,the figures still seem ill-arranged. The small item that I havegiven will do as well as any other to begin with, as it certainlywill lead you to ask, ‘Pray, who was Mrs. Katy Scudder?’—andthis will start me systematically on my story.

You must understand that in the then small seaport-town ofNewport, at that time unconscious of its present fashion andfame, there lived nobody in those days who did not know ‘theWidow Scudder.’

In New England settlements a custom has obtained, which iswholesome and touching, of ennobling the woman whom Godhas made desolate, by a sort of brevet rank which continuallyspeaks for her as a claim on the respect and consideration of thecommunity. The Widow Jones, or Brown, or Smith, is one ofthe fixed institutions of every New England village,—anddoubtless the designation acts as a continual plea for one whombereavement, like the lightning of heaven, has made sacred.

The Widow Sc

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