_THE MAYFLOWER EDITION_ THE BEST STORIES OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I __THE MAYFLOWER EDITION__ THE BEST STORIES OF SARAH ORNE JEWETT SELECTED AND ARRANGED WITH A PREFACE BY WILLA CATHER VOLUME I [Illustration: [Logo]] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY =The Riverside Press Cambridge= 1925 COPYRIGHT, 1896 AND 1899, BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT COPYRIGHT, 1910 AND 1924, BY MARY R. JEWETT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED =The Riverside Press= CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. ... _I always think of her as of one who, hearing New England accused of being a bleak land without beauty, passes confidently over the snow, and by the gray rock, and past the dark fir tree, to a southern bank, and there, brushing away the decayed leaves, triumphantly shows to the faultfinder a spray of the trailing arbutus. And I should like, for my own part, to add this: that the fragrant, retiring, exquisite flower, which I think she would say is the symbol of New England virtue, is the symbol also of her own modest and delightful art._ From THE ART OF MISS JEWETT, by Charles Miner Thompson, in the _Atlantic_ for October, 1904 CONTENTS