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Amelia E. Barr 1831-1919Author(s): Rose NormanSource: Legacy, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999), pp. 193-200Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25679303 .
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LEGACY PROFILE
Amelia E. Barr 1831-1919
Rose Norman
University of Alabama in Huntsville
In
1889, a critic reviewing the twelve nov els Amelia E. Barr had written in the pre
vious five years concluded his essay with the assessment that "Mrs. Amelia E. Ban
may very well rank as the foremost woman
novelist in America" (Adams, O. 268). Ban would publish fifty more novels and novel
las, as well as a steady stream of short sto
ries, poems, and essays, in a writing ca reer that lasted nearly fifty years, yet she never achieved the critical recognition this
early admirer predicted, nor has her work attracted the interest of modern feminist critics. The qualities that led that critic to such high praise of Amelia Barr, however, are qualities that make many of Barr's books still highly readable today?excellent story telling combined with a genuine interest in
history and human nature, especially the
ability to rise above adversity. Her main sig nificance lies in the way she transforms the
popular romance novel, through attention to historical detail, greater depth of charac
terization, and often intelligent attention to serious issues, from abortion to wife-beating.
While she does not directly challenge mores
(her women, e.g., do not seek careers),
she depicts a world in which women and men negotiate sensible and fair ways of
Amelia Barr
Portrait at the Age of Eighteen?Austin, Texas
Archives & Information Services
Division?Texas State Library
working within the boundaries of gender expectations.
For Barr, writing was more a craft than an
art, and she is preeminently a good popular
LEGACY, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1999. Copyright ? 1999 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
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novelist, able to tell a story that entertains and stimulates readers, while at the same time developing the moral and spiritual lessons that were important to her. The credo everywhere evident in her novels is well expressed in a passage she wrote as a Christmas message for Good Housekeeping in 1915: "Daily life teaches us many great lessons. Chief among them are these three: the highest success is to trust God, the great est happiness is to love and be loved, the truest satisfaction is a good day's work well done" (770). She finds many interesting ways to express this message through characters and stories on a wide variety of topics. While all of her novels feature a love interest, she also addresses such serious subjects as the Salem witch hunt (The Black Shilling, 1903),
slavery (She Loved a Sailor, 1890), abortion
(The Measure of a Man, 1915), and wife
beating (Friend Olivia, 1889). Amelia Barr wrote about such a wide va
riety of subjects that it is difficult to choose a "typical" novel or to classify her work. Her abiding passion was the study of history, and many of her novels draw on her histor ical research, including three set in seven teenth and eighteenth-century England, one
set in early Texas (where she had lived as a
young wife), and twelve tracing New York
history from pre-Revolutionary times to the
early twentieth century. Another twenty or so are set in the England and Scotland of her childhood in the 1830s, most of them romances for which she says she did no his torical research, drawing only on memory and stories she was told. Some of the English novels could be classified as industrial nov
els, treating the lives of mill owners and mill workers. The last of these, The Paper Cap (1918), is actually dedicated to Samuel Gom
pers and tells the story of the first British Reform. There is social consciousness in
these industrial novels, Christian fervor in the novels about Cromwell's day (The Lion's
Whelp, 1901) and the British persecution
of Quakers (Friend Olivia), and throughout a close attention to the details of domestic
life, whether in an obscure fishing village in the Shetland Islands, or among New York's
society women.
As with any prolific novelist, there are some character types to which she returns
repeatedly. There is the beautiful, good, in nocent who typically falls in love with some one to whom her family objects, sometimes a man of a higher class, who marries her
leading to their ruin (A Singer from the
Sea, 1893) or leaves her for a woman of his own class (Thyra Varrick, 1903) or outrages and thus loses her by suggesting they run
away without marrying (Feet of Clay, 1889).
Counterpoint to this innocent, we have the beautiful and spirited young woman, often the good friend of the more naive type, who
speaks her mind, may be selfish but not
cruel, and is often humbled in the end. Par
ticipating actively in the story is the middle
aged mother, who usually dotes on her n'er do-well son, but is often shown to be wiser than her good-hearted, but stubborn, hus
band, who dotes on the daughter (who may be either innocent or spirited, but is always beautiful). Finally, there is often a deeply re
ligious man (sometimes woman) who must face adversity with the aid of God, who
encourages his practical and sensible side. These somewhat familiar character types may be English, Scottish, or American (in cluding Mexican American in Remember the
Alamo, 1888, and Dutch American in sev eral New York history novels) and are usually middle class or upper middle class. Barr also creates strong British working-class charac
ters in novels set among sea-going people of the Isle of Man (Feet of Clay), the Cornish coast (A Singerfrom the Sea), or the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland (Thyra Var rick and Jan Vedder's Wife). Barr obviously admires these fisher-folk, and in fact has such an affinity for the sea that even in the New York history novels she often makes her heroes ship captains or naval officers.
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Rose Norman
Barr's wide-ranging subject matter re
flects her broad reading and her varied
experiences, reported in novelistic detail in her autobiography All the Days of My Life (1913), which is the chief source of
biographical information about her, and what some consider her best book (Gra ham, "Amelia Barr"; Hamblen). Although she spent her entire writing career in and near New York City, she was brought up in the north of England, where her father, a
Methodist minister, moved the family to a different congregation every two or three
years. Born Amelia Edith Huddleston in Ul
verston, Lancashire, she grew up in Cum
berland, Yorkshire, and the Isle of Man, all
lovingly recreated as the settings of novels. She was studying to be a teacher at a Wes
leyan school in Glasgow when she met and married Robert Barr, a Scottish millowner. Within two years, her husband had suffered business reverses that led them to emigrate to the United States when she was in her
early twenties (1853). Settling first in Chi
cago, then Memphis, they ultimately spent over ten years in Texas (1857-69) .
By 1865, Amelia Barr had six children
(three others had died in infancy) and was
deeply immersed in child-raising and house
keeping. All this was dramatically changed in 1867 when the death of her husband and three sons in a yellow fever epidemic turned
her from a homemaker to a breadwinner.
Working to support herself and her three re
maining daughters would become the dom inant mode of her life. In 1869, they left Texas for New Jersey, where Barr had a job tutoring three young boys, but, encouraged by her employer, she began to write stories and soon moved to New York City to support herself entirely by writing.
Always an avid reader, Barr had "longed to write books" as a teenager (All the Days 59), and had tried writing a novel while they lived in Texas, but gave it up because of the demands of family life (Graham, "Texas
Memoirs" 482). Thus starting a new life as
a professional writer was both a challenge and the fulfillment of a dream. While the Christian Union and other religious papers kept her busy, success was slow in coming. She describes a ten-year writing apprentice ship during which she began spending long hours at New York libraries, industriously researching and writing stories, poems, and
essays. Her first book, Romances and Re alities (1875), collected some of her short fiction and essays, but she earned nothing for it because it came out when the publisher
was failing. Professional success and the beginning of
financial security came with her third novel, Jan Vedder s Wife (1885), which illustrates
many of her typical themes and characters. Set in the isolated Shetland Islands off the
west coast of Scotland, the novel tells the
story of how Jan Vedder and Margaret Fae
marry, separate, and eventually come back
together and have a long, happy marriage. Typically for Barr, their marital trials are told with perceptiveness about both the hus band's and the wife's perspectives. The cen tral conflict is over the difference in their attitude toward money. Jan Vedder is a light hearted, popular fisherman without family or riches, while Margaret Fae is the only child of Peter Fae, a prosperous storeowner in
the little town of Lerwick. They marry over her father's objections, and Peter retaliates
by withholding her dowry, though he gives them a house to live in. This soon leads to trouble as Margaret hoards, while Jan is a
spendthrift, a conflict worsened as Jan has a series of financial setbacks, until Margaret
moves back to her father's house. Margaret's life takes a turn for the worse when her
recently widowed father remarries a woman
Margaret's age, chastening her proud spirit by subordinating her place in the household. The low point comes when Jan gets into a
fight and disappears for many years, leading to local gossip and Margaret and Peter Fae's
mutual suspicion of each other. At this point, Barr alternates two plots, what happens to
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Margaret and Peter in Lerwick, and what
happens to Jan Vedder himself. Both of these
plot lines are considerably more romanti cized and unbelievable than the domestic
story that led up to them. But plot summary does not do this novel
justice. Barr is remarkable in bringing to
life characters that might readily resolve to
stereotype in the hands of a lesser writer. Peter Fae and his young second wife, for
example, are fully realized characters, and
Jan's friendship with another man, Michael
Snorro, is developed in an interesting, some
what homoerotic, way. Like many of Barr's
novels, the book shows a character dramati
cally transformed by adversity (Margaret Fae) and highlights the virtues of self-sacrificing men (Snorro and a minister in this case).
She followed Jan Vedder's Wife with The Bow of Orange Ribbon (1886), the first of her New York history novels, and both nov
els were still in print thirty years later. Barr's
popular appeal lies in what one contempo rary reviewer described as "a hearty zest
for sound and simple people; people who do not sophisticate, who have passions and are not ashamed of them; who love frankly and unreservedly; who believe in themselves and their fellows and God" (Mabie 324).
By and large, however, her fiction lacks in tellectual depth, though the historical nov els show a keen understanding of intellec tual debates and a capacity to report these
with fidelity to historical fact.1 Her novels are far better than her short stories, which are rather shallow, lacking the artistry we
associate with Rose Terry Cooke or Sarah Orne Jewett. The novels are crowded with
incident, but are neither as sensational as
E.D.E.N. Southworth's, nor as sentimental
as those of Augusta Jane Evans Wilson or
Susan Warner. Indeed the one modern crit
ical article on Barr seems to entirely miss
the mark in treating Barr as a sentimentalist
(Bogard). Rather, her work is informed by a
very deep Christianity that expresses itself in characters transformed through Christian
faith. She rarely lingers over descriptions of
sorrowing mothers or orphans, although she
regularly sets up scenes of social injustice or lovers parted. Religious belief was ex
tremely important to Barr, but she was an
independent thinker who enjoyed intellec tual debate with ministers, and her Christian faith was not tied to the doctrine of any
particular church. It was compatible with a
belief in reincarnation that she came to late in life, as well as supernatural experiences such as premonitory dreams. Interestingly, she reports many supernatural experiences in her autobiography, as well as in a second
memoir about old age, but her novels do not
emphasize these kinds of experiences. Neither typically American nor typically
British, her novels are typically Amelia Barr,
recognizable for the way she develops her romantic plots in British or American set
tings. It is the work of a woman who might spend ten hours a day writing for weeks on
end. Like Southworth, she wrote for a living,
produced an amazing number of books, and
assiduously sought ways to sell her work for the highest price. She soon learned that the best price was in serial publication, selling her novel Friend Olivia to Century Maga zine for $3,000 in 1888, more than triple the price her publisher had been paying for
novels, and later signing a contract for four
novels at $2,500 each to be serialized in Robert Bonner's New York Ledger (1891 92). Her greatest productivity came in the decade 1889-99.2
Writing so fast, and especially writing for serial publication, may account for some of the flaws in the novels published in the ten years after Adams ranked Barr as "the
foremost woman novelist in America." The Flower of Gala Water, serialized in Godey's in 1893, is a very shallow and predictable ro
mance, and Trinity Bells (1899) reads like a
novel intended for adolescents, though Barr does not treat it as such in her autobiography. Although she wrote Michael and Theodora for the children's magazine St. Nicholas in
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Rose Norman
1892, she turned down an offer from Youth's
Companion because she didn't think they
paid enough and because of various restric
tions she found too limiting.3 She restricts
herself by insisting on a happy ending for
all her novels, which leads to some unlikely
plot twists. In Friend Olivia, for example, when pirates capture the ship on which
the Quaker Olivia is emigrating to America, the chief pirate is struck by lightning as he
is about to rape Olivia. But it was also in
working on Friend Olivia, her first serial
for publisher Richard Gilder, that Barr found
perhaps her first serious training in how
to write for the popular audience. A series
of letters to Gilder (now at the Alderman
Library of the University of Virginia) show
that she heavily revised Friend Olivia in re
sponse to Gilder's advice, adding chapters and developing the characters with greater force. Revising Friend Olivia, one of her
best and most absorbing novels, gave her a
taste for what it would be like to write for a
more demanding audience, but she seems to
have been compelled by financial necessity and her own obsession with productivity to
write in haste, even well into her eighties. She nearly always had several projects go
ing at a time, especially in the first fifteen
years of her writing career, when she was
turning out at least one story and poem a
week for the New York Ledger. Yet there is an authenticity in her writing that raises
much of it well beyond the general level of
popular novels. In her autobiography, Barr
writes of her sense of knowing and being with her characters while she writes, and
she mentions being unable to write a story about Evangeline because
" I can't feel that
story, so I can't, and won't write it!'" (424).
Probably her major flaw is her unwilling ness to allow an unhappy ending. Barr is
determined that in the world of her nov
els, suffer though her characters may along the way, they will end up happily married. In fact, a sort of signature gesture in many of her novels is a concluding chapter that
jumps ahead to show her young lovers as a
middle-aged married couple with their chil
dren around them. "In a book, marriage may be the end of a story; in reality, it is the
beginning" she writes at the end of Thyra Varrick (336). Perhaps more than anything, her novels stand as object lessons to other
women, not only advice to young courting
couples in matters of the heart, but also to
married couples negotiating domestic rela
tions. In the preface to her autobiography, she urges women to follow her own exam
ple of industry and perseverance, writing, "I
have drunk the cup of [women's] limitations to the dregs, and if my experience can help any sad or doubtful woman to outleap her own shadow, and to stand bravely out in the
sunshine to meet her destiny, whatever it
may be, I shall have done well" (viii). While
Barr cannot be considered a feminist (e.g., she opposed women's suffrage), her work
promotes egalitarian relations between the
sexes, founded on honesty, industry, and
kindness.
She seems to have personally flourished in the independence that came with widow
hood and her success as a writer. In the con
clusion of her autobiography, Barr credits her writing life for her health, well being, and cheerfulness well into old age. When
she died of cerebral apoplexy, she was al
most eighty-nine years old and at work on
yet another novel.
Notes
1. Indeed her correspondence about Friend
Olivia shows that she was quite able to defend
her history against the critique of the Yale profes sor to whom the publishers had sent the manu
script for review See AEB to Mr. Johnson, Dec. 21,
1889, in the Barrett Collection at the Alderman
Library of the University of Virginia. 2. Of the twenty-one novels she published from
1889 to 1899, twelve were serialized. After that, she seems to have given up serial publication?
whether by choice or circumstance is not clear?
and in any case, all of her novels were published in book form soon after serialization.
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3. Barr reports her response to Youth's Com
panion restrictions in her autobiography: "Their
pages were large, and I could not afford to accept their terms, which were burdened also with sev
eral limitations and forbidden topics. It was very
unlikely that I should ever have touched these topics, unless forbidden to do so. That temptation
might have made me wish to show the censors
how innocently, and indeed profitably, they might be touched" (418).
Works Cited (See Selected Primary Works for Works by Barr.)
Adams, Oscar Fay. "The Novels of Mrs. Barr."
Andover Review (Mar. 1889): 248-68.
Adams, Paul. "Amelia Barr in Texas, 1856-1868."
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 59 (1946): 361-73.
"Amelia E. Barr." Good Housekeeping (Dec.
1915): 770.
Bogard, Robert. "Amelia Barr, Augusta Evans Wil
son, and the Sentimental Novel." Marab 2
(1965-66): 13-25 Graham, Philip. "Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr."
Notable American Women. Ed. Edward T
James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1971. 94-96.
-, ed. "Texas Memoirs of Amelia E. Barr/'
Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 69 (1966): 473-98. [prints "Memoirs of Amelia E. Barr" by her daughter Lillie Barr Munroe, 1857 to 18671
Hamblen, Abigail. "Amelia Edith Huddleston
Barr." American Women Writers: From Colo
nial Times to the Present. Ed. Lina Mainiero
and Langdon Lynne Faust. Vol. 1. New York:
Ungar, 1979. 116-18.
Mabie, Hamilton W. "Amelia E. Barr." Book Buyer 8 (1891): 323-24.
Selected Bibliography
Archives American Literary Manuscripts lists Barr's let
ters and manuscripts in thirty-one libraries in
sixteen states. The most important material
from her Texas years is in the Texas State
Archives Library in Austin, Lillie Barr Munro
Collection and Lillie Barr Munro Correspon dence: eleven typescript chapters of an unpub lished novel by Barr, a memoir by her daughter,
Lillie Barr Munro, describing Austin in 1856
67 (published by Graham), two photographs of Barr, and two letters from Lillie Barr Munro re
garding the collection. The largest single collec
tion of Barr's letters is at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, Barrett Collection
(forty-nine letters and two brief manuscripts).
Inquiries to various New York City and New
York state libraries turned up only a smattering of letters. In her autobiography, Barr quotes from the diaries she kept throughout her life, but these do not appear to have survived.
Selected Primary Works:
Autobiography All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography; The
Red Leaves of a Human Heart. New York: D.
Appleton, 1913. New York: Arno, 1980.
Three Score Years and Ten. New York: D. Apple
ton, 1913.
Selected Primary Works: Novels
Set in Scotland and Scottish Islands:
Jan Vedder's Wife. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1885.
Friend Olivia. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1889.
The Beads ofTasmer. New York: Robert Bonner's
Sons, 1890.
The Flower of Gala Water. New York: Robert
Bonner's Sons, 1894.
Souls of Passage. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901.
Thyra Varrick.A Love Story. New York: J. F. Taylor & Company, 1903.
Set in England: Between Two Loves: A Tale of the West Riding.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886.
The Squire of Sandal-Side: A Pastoral Romance.
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1886.
Master of His Fate. New York: Dodd, Mead., 1888;
British title, In Spite of Himself: A Tale of the West Riding, London: J. Clarke & Co., 1888.
Feet of Clay. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1889. A Singer from the Sea. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1893.
The Lion's Whelp: A Story of Cromwell's Time. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901.
The Measure of a Man. New York: D. Appleton,
1915.
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Rose Norman
The Paper Cap: A Story of Love and Labor. New York: D. Appleton, 1918.
Set in the United States (primarily New York): The Bow of Orange Ribbon: A Romance of New
York. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1886.
Remember the Alamo. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1888; British title, Woven of Love and Glory, London: F. Warne, 1890; rpt. Boston: Gregg,
1979; Electronic Text Center, University of
Virginia Library: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ She Loved a Sailor. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1890.
Girls of a Feather. New York: R. Bonner's Sons,
1893.
Trinity Bells: A Tale of Old New York. New York:
J. F. Taylor, 1899.
The Maid of Maiden Lane: A Sequel to "The Bow
of Orange Ribbon." A Love Story. New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1900.
A Song of a Single Note: A Love Story. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1902.
The Black Shilling: A Tale of Boston Towns. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903.
The Belle of Bowling Green. New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1904.
Cecelia's Lovers. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1905.
A Maid of Old New York: A Romance of Peter
Stuyvesant's Time. New York: Dodd, Mead,
1911.
Selected Collections Romances and Realities: Tales of Truth and
Fancy. New York, J. B. Ford, 1875.
Scottish Sketches. New York: American Tract So
ciety, 1883; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898; rpt.
Freeport: Books for Libraries P, 1971.
Christopher and Other Stories. New York: Phil
lips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe,
1888; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898; rpt. Freeport: Books for Libraries P, 1971.
Mrs. Barr's Short Stories. New York: Robert
Bonner's Sons, 1891.
The Mate of the Easter Bell and Other Stories.
New York: Robert Bonner's Sons, 1893.
Winter Evening Tales. 2 vols. New York: Christian
Herald, 1896.
Stories of Life and Love. New York: Christian
Herald, 1897.
Selected Secondary Works (See also Works Cited) Bacon, Edgar Mayhew. "Amelia E. Barr in Corn
wall-on-the-Hudson, New York." In Women Au
thors of Our Day in Their Homes; Personal De
scriptions and Interviews. Ed. Francis Whiting
Halsey. New York: J. Pott, 1898; 1903. 111-20.
Harkins, E[dward]. Ffrancis]. Famous Authors
(Women). Boston: L. C. Page, 1901. 125-40.
Hawthorne, Hildegarde. "Amelia E. Barr?Some
Reminiscences." Bookman 51 (1920): 283-86.
"An Industrious Life." Nation 97 (1913): 144-45.
"Mrs. Amelia Barr, the Novelist." Review of Re
views (May 1919): 548-49. Norman, Rose. "Amelia E. Barr." American
Women Prose Writers 1870-1920. Ed. Sharon
M. Harris, et. al. New York: Gale, forthcoming.
Obituary. The New York Times 12 March 1919: 11.
Sweetser, Kate Dickinson. "Amelia Barr and the
Novice." Bookman 58 (1923): 172-78.
"Writing Fiction Not Profitable, Says Amelia Barr."
New York Times 21 July 1912: sec. 5: 5.
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Excerpt from Jan Vedder's Wife, Chapter III, pp. 36-39
The gravitation of character is naturally toward
its weakest point. Margaret's weakest point was
an intense, though unconscious, selfishness. Jan's
restless craving for change and excitement made
him dissatisfied with the daily routine of life, lazy, and often unreasonable. His very blessings became offenses to him. His clean, well-ordered
house, made him fly to the noisy freedom of
Ragon Torr's kitchen. Margaret's never-ceasing
industry, her calmness, neatness and deliberation,
exasperated him as a red cloth does a bull.
Suneva Torr had married Paul Glumm, and
Jan often watched her as he sat drinking his
ale in Torr's kitchen. At home, it is true, she
tormented Glumm with her contrary, provoking
moods; but then, again, she met him with smiles
and endearments that atoned for every thing. Jan
thought it would be a great relief if Margaret were
only angry sometimes. For he wearied of her
constant serenity, as people weary of sunshine
without cloud or shadow.
And Margaret suffered. No one could doubt
that who watched her face from day to day. She
made no complaint, not even to her mother.
Thora, however, perceived it all. She had foreseen
and foretold the trouble, but she was too noble
a woman to point out the fulfillment of her
prophecy. As she went about her daily work, she
considered, and not unkindly, the best means for
bringing Jan back to his wife and home, and his
first pride in them.
She believed that the sea only could do it. After all, her heart was with the men who loved it. She
felt that Jan was as much out of place counting
eggs, as a red stag would be if harnessed to a plow.
She, at least, understood the rebellious, unhappy look on his handsome face. When the ling fishing
was near at hand, she said to Peter: "There is one
thing that is thy duty, and that is to give Jan the
charge of a boat. He is for the sea, and it is not well
that so good a sailor should go out of the family." "I have no mind to do that. Jan will do well
one day, and he will do as ill as can be the next. I
will not trust a boat with him."
"It seems to me that where thou could trust
Margaret, thou might well trust nineteen feet of
keel, and fifty fathom of long line."
Peter answered her not, and Thora kept si
lence also. But at the end, when he had smoked
his pipe, and was lifting the Bible for the evening exercise, he said: "Thou shalt have thy way, wife:
Jan shall have a boat, but thou wilt see evil will
come of it."
"Thou wert always good, Peter, and in this
thing I am thinking of more than fish. There is
sorrow in Margaret's house. A mother can feel
that."
"Now, then, meddle thou not in the matter.
Every man loves in his own way. Whatever there
is between Jan and Margaret is a thing by itself.
But I will speak about the boat in the morning."
el
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