PREFACE


There will be many people in this book; some will be important, others
will come on the scene for a time and return no more. The life-lines of
these persons will cross and recross, to meet once or twice and not
again, like the ruts in a much used road. To-day the stage may be
crowded, to-morrow empty. The corner novels where only a half dozen
people are concerned give no impression of the multitudinous contacts
which affect human lives. Even of the limited life of a village this is
true. It was more true of the time of my story, which lacking plot must
rely for interest on the influential relations of social groups, then
more defined in small communities than they are to-day.

Long before the Civil War there were in the middle states, near to or
remote from great centres, villages where the social division of classes
was tacitly accepted. In or near these towns one or more families were
continuously important on account of wealth or because of historic
position, generations of social training, and constant relation to the
larger world. They came by degrees to constitute what I may describe as
an indistinct caste, for a long time accepted as such by their less
fortune-favoured neighbours. They were, in fact, for many years almost as
much a class by themselves as are the long-seated county families of
England and like these were looked to for helpful aid in sickness and in
other of the calamities of life. The democrat time, increasing ease of
travel and the growth of large industries, gradually altered the relation
between these small communities, and the families who in the smaller
matters of life long remained singularly familiar with their poorer
neighbours and in the way of closer social intimacies far apart.