Mary Erskine

The Project Guten­berg EBook of Mary Er­sk­ine, by Ja­cob Ab­bott

This eBook is for the use of any­one any­where at no cost and with al­most no re­stric­tions what­so­ev­er. You may copy it, give it away or re-​use it un­der the terms of the Project Guten­berg Li­cense in­clud­ed with this eBook or on­line at www.guten­berg.net

Ti­tle: Mary Er­sk­ine

Au­thor: Ja­cob Ab­bott

Re­lease Date: De­cem­ber 26, 2004 [EBook #14475]

Lan­guage: En­glish

Char­ac­ter set en­cod­ing: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTEN­BERG EBOOK MARY ER­SK­INE ***

Pro­duced by Sher­ry Ham­by, Ted Garvin, Cori Samuel and the PG On­line Dis­tribut­ed Proof­read­ing Team

[Il­lus­tra­tion: MARY ER­SK­INE'S FARM]

MARY ER­SK­INE

A Fran­co­nia Sto­ry,

BY THE AU­THOR OF THE ROL­LO BOOKS.

NEW YORK: HARP­ER & BROTH­ERS PUB­LISH­ERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE.

En­tered, ac­cord­ing to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by HARP­ER & BROTH­ERS, In the Clerk's Of­fice for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York.

PREF­ACE.

The de­vel­op­ment of the moral sen­ti­ments in the hu­man heart, in ear­ly life,--and ev­ery thing in fact which re­lates to the for­ma­tion of char­ac­ter,--is de­ter­mined in a far greater de­gree by sym­pa­thy, and by the in­flu­ence of ex­am­ple, than by for­mal pre­cepts and di­dac­tic in­struc­tion. If a boy hears his fa­ther speak­ing kind­ly to a robin in the spring,--wel­com­ing its com­ing and of­fer­ing it food,--there aris­es at once in his own mind, a feel­ing of kind­ness to­ward the bird, and to­ward all the an­imal cre­ation, which is pro­duced by a sort of sym­pa­thet­ic ac­tion, a pow­er some­what sim­ilar to what in phys­ical phi­los­ophy is called _in­duc­tion_. On the oth­er hand, if the fa­ther, in­stead of feed­ing the bird, goes ea­ger­ly for a gun, in or­der that he may shoot it, the boy will sym­pa­thize in that de­sire, and grow­ing up un­der such an in­flu­ence, there will be grad­ual­ly formed with­in him, through the mys­te­ri­ous ten­den­cy of the youth­ful heart to vi­brate in uni­son with hearts that are near, a dis­po­si­tion to kill and de­stroy all help­less be­ings that come with­in his pow­er. There is no need of any for­mal in­struc­tion in ei­ther case. Of a thou­sand chil­dren brought up un­der the for­mer of the above-​de­scribed in­flu­ences, near­ly ev­ery one, when he sees a bird, will wish to go and get crumbs to feed it, while in the lat­ter case, near­ly ev­ery one will just as cer­tain­ly look for a stone. Thus the grow­ing up in the right at­mo­sphere, rather than the re­ceiv­ing of the right in­struc­tion, is the con­di­tion which it is most im­por­tant to se­cure, in plans for form­ing the char­ac­ters of chil­dren.

It is in ac­cor­dance with this phi­los­ophy that these sto­ries, though writ­ten main­ly with a view to their moral in­flu­ence on the hearts and dis­po­si­tions of the read­ers, con­tain very lit­tle for­mal ex­hor­ta­tion and in­struc­tion. They present qui­et and peace­ful pic­tures of hap­py do­mes­tic life, por­tray­ing gen­er­al­ly such con­duct, and ex­press­ing such sen­ti­ments and feel­ings, as it is de­sir­able to ex­hib­it and ex­press in the pres­ence of chil­dren.

The books, how­ev­er, will be found, per­haps, af­ter all, to be use­ful main­ly in en­ter­tain­ing and amus­ing the youth­ful read­ers who may pe­ruse them, as the writ­ing of them has been the amuse­ment and recre­ation of the au­thor in the in­ter­vals of more se­ri­ous pur­suits.

CON­TENTS.

CHAP­TER

I.--JEM­MY

II.--THE BRIDE

III.--MARY ER­SK­INE'S VIS­ITORS

IV.--CALAMI­TY

V.--CON­SUL­TA­TIONS

VI.--MARY BELL IN THE WOODS

VII.--HOUSE-​KEEP­ING

VI­II.--THE SCHOOL

IX.--GOOD MAN­AGE­MENT

X.--THE VIS­IT TO MARY ER­SK­INE'S

EN­GRAV­INGS.

MARY ER­SK­INE'S FARM--FRON­TISPIECE.

CATCH­ING THE HORSE

THE LOG HOUSE

MARY BELL AT THE BROOK

THE WID­OW AND THE FA­THER­LESS

MRS. BELL

MARY BELL AND QUEEN BESS

MARY BELL GET­TING BREAK­FAST

THE SCHOOL

GO­ING TO COURT

THE STRAW­BER­RY PAR­TY

THE FRAN­CO­NIA STO­RIES.

OR­DER OF THE VOL­UMES.

MAL­LEVILLE.

WAL­LACE.

MARY ER­SK­INE.

MARY BELL.

BEECH­NUT.

RODOL­PHUS.

ELLEN LINN.

STUYVESANT.

CAR­OLINE.

AGNES.

SCENE OF THE STO­RY

The coun­try in the vicin­ity of Fran­co­nia, at the North.

PRIN­CI­PAL PER­SONS

MARY ER­SK­INE.

AL­BERT.

PHON­NY and MAL­LEVILLE, cousins, re­sid­ing at the house of Phon­ny's moth­er.

MRS. HEN­RY, Phon­ny's moth­er.

AN­TO­NIO BLANCHINETTE, a French boy, re­sid­ing at Mrs. Hen­ry's; com­mon­ly called Beech­nut.

MRS. BELL, a wid­ow la­dy, liv­ing in the vicin­ity of Mrs. Hen­ry's.

MARY BELL, her daugh­ter.

MARY ER­SK­INE.