including the utter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to make a living
anywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the church for their
Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her
lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron
out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so
often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He,
still a failure, having waited for years for his luck to turn, has come back
to spend Christmas in the home of his boyhood; and seeing a dim light in the
church, he enters quietly and surprises Nancy at her task of carpeting the
Peabody Pew, so that it shall look as well as the others at next day's
services. The rest is easy to imagine. One can deny the reality of a book, but
when two or three thousand people have beheld Justin Peabody and Nancy
Wentworth in the flesh, and have seen the paint of the old Peabody Pew wiped
with a damp cloth, its cushion darned and its carpet tacked in place, it is
useless to argue; any more than it would be to deny the validity of the egg of
Columbus or the apple of William Tell.

As for "Susanna and Sue" the story would never have been written had I not as
a child and girl been driven once a year to the Shaker meeting at the little
village of Alfred, sixteen miles distant. The services were then open to the
public, but eventually permission to attend them was withdrawn, because of the
careless and sometimes irreverent behavior of young people who regarded the
Shaker costumes, the solemn dances or marches, the rhythmic movements of the
hands, the almost hypnotic crescendo of the singing, as a sort of humorous
spectacle. I learned to know the brethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years
went by, and often went to the main house to spend a day or two as the guest
of Eldress Harriet, a saint, if ever there was one, or, later, with dear
Sister Lucinda.

The shining cleanliness and order, the frugality and industry, the serenity