The Queen of the Swamp, and other plain Americans

by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

THE QUEEN OF THE
SWAMP

And Other Plain Americans

BY
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1900

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

NOTE

Some of these stories were written more than a dozen years ago. They have been gathered in from the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazar, Outing, the Independent, the Delineator, the Chicago Tribune, the late Chicago Graphic, and Lippincott’s Magazine, by courteous permission of the editors; and revised year after year. Many of them embody phases of American life which have entirely passed away, or are yet to be found in secluded spots like eddies along the margin of the nation’s progress. Their honest preservation of middle western experience makes them, at least in the author’s eyes, seem worthy themselves of preservation.

The Puritan and the Church of England took possession of the Atlantic seaboard, north and south; and Jesuit and Recollet missionaries carried the cross through Canada and down the Mississippi. But the pioneer evangelist of the Middle West was the Methodist itinerant.