To a certain handful of dear New England women of names unknown to the
world, dwelling in a certain quiet village, alike unknown:--
We have worked together to make our little corner of the great universe
a pleasanter place in which to live, and so we know, not only one
another's names, but something of one another's joys and sorrows, cares
and burdens, economies, hopes, and anxieties.
We all remember the dusty uphill road that leads to the green church
common. We remember the white spire pointing upward against a background
of blue sky and feathery elms. We remember the sound of the bell
that falls on the Sabbath morning stillness, calling us across the
daisy-sprinkled meadows of June, the golden hayfields of July, or the
dazzling whiteness and deep snowdrifts of December days. The little
cabinet-organ that plays the Doxology, the hymn-books from which we sing
“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” the sweet freshness of the
old meeting-house, within and without,--how we have toiled to secure and
preserve these humble mercies for ourselves and our children!
There really is a Dorcas Society, as you and I well know, and one
not unlike that in these pages; and you and I have lived through many
discouraging, laughable, and beautiful experiences while we emulated the
Bible Dorcas, that woman “full of good works and alms deeds.”
There never was a Peabody Pew in the Tory Hill Meeting-House, and
Nancy's love story and Justin's never happened within its century-old
walls, but I have imagined only one of the many romances that have had
their birth under the shadow of that steeple, did we but realize it.
As you have sat there on open-windowed Sundays, looking across purple
clover-fields to blue distant mountains, watching the palm-leaf fans
swaying to and fro in the warm stillness before sermon time, did not the
place seem full of memories, for has not the life of two villages ebbed
and flowed beneath that ancient roof? You heard the hum of droning
bees and followed the airy wings of butterflies fluttering over
the grave-stones in the old churchyard, and underneath almost every
moss-grown tablet some humble romance lies buried and all but forgotten.
If it had not been for you, I should never have written this story, so I
give it back to you tied with a sprig from Ophelia's nosegay; a sprig of
“rosemary, that's for remembrance.”