The Morgesons

Excerpt

I suppose it was environment that caused me to write these novels; but the mystery of it is, that when I left my native village I did not dream that imagination would lead me there again, for the simple annals of our village and domestic ways did not interest me; neither was I in the least studious.  My years were passed in an attempt to have a good time, according to the desires and fancies of youth.  Of literature and the literary life, I and my tribe knew nothing; we had not discovered “sermons in stones.”  Where then was the panorama of my stories and novels stored, that was unrolled in my new sphere?  Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amusement.  It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing,—­that interminable thing, “white seam,” which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded.  To the personnel of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter’s gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ardent Ernest Maltravers, of Bulwer.