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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Westways, by S. Weir Mitchell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Westways Author: S. Weir Mitchell Release Date: November 26, 2004 [eBook #14153] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESTWAYS*** E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team WESTWAYS A Village Chronicle by S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D. Author of _Hugh Wynne_, _The Adventures of Francois_, _Constance Trescot_, etc., etc. 1913 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK WHICH RECALLS CERTAIN SCENES OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE MEMORY OF MY THREE BROTHERS R.W.M. N.C.M. E.K.M. ALL OF WHOM SERVED IN THE ARMIES OF THEIR COUNTRY PREFACE There will be many people in this book; some will be important, others will come on the scene for a time and return no more. The life-lines of these persons will cross and recross, to meet once or twice and not again, like the ruts in a much used road. To-day the stage may be crowded, to-morrow empty. The corner novels where only a half dozen people are concerned give no impression of the multitudinous contacts which affect human lives. Even of the limited life of a village this is true. It was more true of the time of my story, which lacking plot must rely for interest on the influential relations of social groups, then more defined in small communities than they are to-day. Long before the Civil War there were in the middle states, near to or remote from great centres, villages where the social division of classes was tacitly accepted. In or near these towns one or more families were continuously important on account of wealth or because of historic position, generations of social training, and constant relation to the larger world. They came by degrees to constitute what I may describe as an indistinct caste, for a long time accepted as such by their less fortune-favoured neighbours. They were, in fact, for many years almost as much a class by themselves as are the long-seated county families of England and like these were looked to for helpful aid in sickness and in other of the calamitie
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