_To my Sister_,
MARY C. PANGBORN
NOTE: Pastor John Williams of Deerfield is a historical figure; Belding,
Stebbins, Hoyt, Wells and Hawks were actual names in the Deerfield of
1704. With these minor exceptions, all characters in this novel are
completely fictitious, not intended to suggest any actual person living
or dead.
The language of the dialogue is a compromise, an attempt to convey some
quality of early eighteenth-century speech, but not to create a literal
reproduction of it, since that might be tedious and obscure in some
places to modern readers. For a literal reproduction the worst nuisance
would have been those words, such as "naughty," that have changed not in
form but in meaning or emotional charge. I have tried to avoid all these
except where the context should make plain their archaic sense. I think
the use of "thee" and "thou" is substantially correct. At that time the
second person singular could be used in English as in most European
languages today, for intimates and children, but the universal "you" was
already displacing it. The third person singular verb ending was
obsolescent but still in some use; "hath" and "doth" seem to have
survived long after the ending was abandoned in other verbs.
In the modern (_Everyman_) edition of Montaigne, the essay that Mr.
Kenny asks for is entitled "Of Training" instead of "Use Makes Perfect."
The copy from Mr. Kenny's library was the seventeenth-century
translation by Charles Cotton.
My special thanks to Mrs. Kelsey Flower of Deerfield, who gave me
welcome aid with the research; and to the personnel of the State Library
at Albany, N.Y. for their unfailing helpfulness and courtesy.