The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Ward, Preacher, by Margaret Deland

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Title: John Ward, Preacher

Author: Margaret Deland

Release Date: May 31, 2006 [EBook #18478]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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JOHN WARD, PREACHER

BY MARGARET DELAND

AUTHOR OF "THE OLD GARDEN"

I sent my soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell;
And by and by my soul returned to me,
And answered, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell"

Omar Khayyam

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1888,
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
_All rights reserved._

To LORIN DELAND
This Book
ALREADY MORE HIS THAN MINE
IS DEDICATED.

Boston, _December 25th, 1887_.

JOHN WARD, PREACHER.

CHAPTER I.

The evening before Helen Jeffrey's wedding day, the whole household at
the rectory came out into the garden.

"The fact is," said Dr. Howe, smiling good-naturedly at his niece, "the
importance of this occasion has made everybody so full of suppressed
excitement one can't breathe in the house."

And indeed a wedding in Ashurst had all the charm of novelty. "Why, bless
my soul," said the rector, "let me see: it must be ten--no, twelve years
since Mary Drayton was married, and that was our last wedding. Well, we
couldn't stand such dissipation oftener; it would wake us up."

But Ashurst rather prided itself upon being half asleep. The rush and
life of newer places had a certain vulgarity; haste was undignified, it
was almost ill bred, and the most striking thing about the village,
resting at the feet of its low green hills, was its atmosphere of leisure
and repose.

Its grassy road was nearly two miles long, so that Ashurst seemed to
cover a great deal of ground, though there were really very few houses.
A lane, leading to the rectory, curled about the foot of East Hill at one
end of the road, and at the other was the brick-walled gar