To
J. R., L. E. W., and L. T. S.,
without whose help this small record
could not have been written.
PREFACE
No one person can fitly describe a neighborhood, no matter how long known, how well loved. Yet records of what is lovely and of good report in a district should be treasured and preserved, however imperfectly.
My father’s name, not mine, should rightly be signed to these pages, for it is his intimate knowledge of our countryside, loved and explored with a boy’s ardor and a naturalist’s insight since childhood, which they strive to set down.
I have taken care to write almost wholly of two or more generations ago, and of persons who, with few exceptions, have now passed out of this life; and I have in all cases altered names, and shifted families from one part of the county to another, to avoid possible annoyance to surviving connections. It has even seemed best in some cases—though I have done so with reluctance—to change the names of villages, of hills and streams, as well.
Beyond this, I have striven only to record faithfully the anecdotes and memories that have come down to me. But no record, however faithful, can be in any way adequate. The rays will be refracted by the medium of the writer’s personality; and the best that can be done will be but a small mirrored fragment, before the daily repeated miracle of the living reality.