A Cathedral Courtship

Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

sept 2016 · anboco

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'A Cathedral Courtship' was first published in 1893, appearing in a volume with 'Penelope's English Experiences.' In course of time, the latter story, finding unexpected favour in the public eyes, left its modest companion, and was promoted to a separate existence, with pictures and covers of its own. Then something rather curious occurred, one of those trifles which serve to make a publisher's life an exciting, if not a happy, one. When the 'gentle reader' (bless his or her warm and irrational heart!) could no longer buy 'A Cathedral Courtship,' a new desire for it sprang into being, and when the demands became sufficiently ardent and numerous, it was decided to republish the story, with illustrations by Mr. Charles E. Brock, an artist who can be viiirelied upon to put new energy into a live tale or resuscitate a dead one. At this point the author, having presumably grown in knowledge of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, was asked to revise the text, and being confronted with the printed page, was overcome by the temptation to add now and then a sentence, line, or paragraph, while the charming shade of Miss Kitty Schuyler perched on every exclamation point, begging permission to say a trifle, just a trifle, more. 'You might allow me to explain myself just there,' she coaxed; 'and if you have told them all I was supposed to be thinking in Winchester or Salisbury or Oxford, why not tell them what I thought in Bath or Peterborough or Ely? It was awfully interesting!' Jack Copley, too, clamoured to be heard still further on the subject of his true-love's charms, so the author yielded to this twofold pressure, and added a few corroborative details. The little courtship, running its placid course through sleepy cathedral towns, has not been altered in the least by these new pages. It is only as if ixthe story-teller, meeting a new pair of interested eyes, had almost unconsciously drifted into fresh confidences. KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.