THE STORY OF KENNETT

BY

BAYARD TAYLOR







PROLOGUE.

TO MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS OF KENNETT:


I wish to dedicate this Story to you, not only because some of you
inhabit the very houses, and till the very fields which I have given to
the actors in it, but also because many of you will recognize certain of
the latter, and are therefore able to judge whether they are drawn with
the simple truth at which I have aimed. You are, naturally, the critics
whom I have most cause to fear; but I do not inscribe these pages to you
with the design of purchasing your favor. I beg you all to accept the
fact as an acknowledgment of the many quiet and happy years I have spent
among you; of the genial and pleasant relations into which I was born,
and which have never diminished, even when I have returned to you from
the farthest ends of the earth; and of the use (often unconsciously to
you, I confess,) which I have drawn from your memories of former days,
your habits of thought and of life.