The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1895-12-04
Sarah Orne Jewett.

Miss Sarah Jewctt?" repeated the keep
or of "A little country store at South Ber-
wick, that beautiful old town on the
Maine coast. Everybody for miles around
knows Miss Sarah. You keep straight up
this street till you've passed two churches, "
he continued. "Then you'll come to the
block, and Opposite the block is great
brown house That's Miss .Iewett's You
can't miss 1t, but anybody in the village
can tell you
The great brown house opposite "the
block, hidden among ancient trees, shell
tiers one of New England soundest. sweet
est and most wholesome writer's and is in
Itself of no inconsiderable interest dating
back as it does to the first half of the last
century, and standing rs one of the best
examples of the old colonial architecture.
wanted to ask Miss Jewett some ques-
tions that might have been rude In
Deephaven" she tells of a particularly in
teresting carpet in whose great figures
Kate Lancaster used to play keep house
with her dolls, and if one of them CHANGED
to fall outside the boundary stripe it was
Immediately put to bed with a cold. l
wondered if that were not the carpet in
her dining room She told me without my
my interest in the noble house was I'M
fcigned, that the place had belonged to
her people for 70 years, and that before
the time of her surgeon father her sea
iaring grandfather had brought home
many of the curios. Before the GRANDPA
theirs time the mansion was an old one,
and there are traces of French elegance as
well Us Of colonial solidity in its flnishings.
Echind the house is a big old fashioned
garden, ard every room is sweet with
pusies. There is stable, too, for Miss
.lcwctt loves her horses and drives almost
daily over the hills of the beautiful coast
of Maine. She is an oarswoman as well,
and her boat knows every reach of the
river and all its quiet sunlit coves. Hers
is life close to nature and yet not apart
from people, for she spends her winters in
Boston. 1t would be hard to plan ones
years on lines more nearly ideal, hard to
see how one could get better chance of
growth and development and strong, true
work-such work as Miss Jewett is doing.
There is rest, there is peace, there is time
to think, and the sincerity and serenity of
it all comes out in her novels
Few writers have felt the scribbling in
stinct as young as Miss Jewett. Lucy
Garrou' Lovers" was written and printed
when its author was somewhere about IA.
Before she was 30 Miss Jewett had seen
her signature in The Atlantic Monthly
and other magazines, but as she counts
things now her serious work did not begin
until some time after then. What the flu
ture may bring she is chary about saying,
but with the best years of her life ahead
the best work is still to come from wom-
an young in years and younger in spirit
and vitality.
Miss .Iewett's "den" is the most de-
lightful have ever seen. 1t is in the up
per hall, with wide window looking
down on the tree shaded village street, A
desk strewn with papers is on one side and
on the other case of books and table.
Pictures, flowers and books are everywhere.
The room set apart for the library is one
of the four great square ones down stairs.
But the books overflow it. They lie upon
the sofas and have shelves in the bedrooms
Scott, particularly, for she does not be-
lieve, with Howells, that the art of novel
writing has grown so much finer thing
since the great romancer's day that we
have nothing to learn from him. 1.-THE
buster get, she said, "the more time
make to read the Waverley novels. "-Bos-
ton Herald.