PREFACE

Of those who are invited to pay a visit to Beechcroft, there are some who, honestly acknowledging that amusement is their object, will be content to feel with Lilias, conjecture with Jane, and get into scrapes with Phyllis, without troubling themselves to extract any moral from their proceedings; and to these the Mohun family would only apologise for having led a very humdrum life during the eighteen months spent in their company.

There may, however, be more unreasonable visitors, who, professing only to come as parents and guardians, expect entertainment for themselves, as well as instruction for those who had rather it was out of sight,—­look for antiques in carved cherry-stones,—­and require plot, incident, and catastrophe in a chronicle of small beer.

To these the Mohuns beg respectfully to observe, that they hope their examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the delineation of the different Scenes and Characters is, that feeling, unguided and unrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the simple endeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to the highest acts of self-devotion.

New court, Beechcroft,
18th January.

PREFACE (1886)

Perhaps this book is an instance to be adduced in support of the advice I have often given to young authors—­not to print before they themselves are old enough to do justice to their freshest ideas.

Not that I can lay claim to its being a production of tender and interesting youth.  It was my second actual publication, and I believe I was of age before it appeared—­but I see now the failures that more experience might have enabled me to avoid; and I would not again have given it to the world if the same characters recurring in another story had not excited a certain desire to see their first start.

In fact they have been more or less my life-long companions.  An almost solitary child, with periodical visits to the Elysium of a large family, it was natural to dream of other children and their ways and sports till they became almost realities.  They took shape when my French master set me to write letters for him.  The letters gradually became conversation and narrative, and the adventures of the family sweetened the toils of French composition.  In the exigencies of village school building in those days gone by, before in every place

“It there behoved him to set up the standard of her Grace,”

the tale was actually printed for private sale, as a link between translations of short stories.

This process only stifled the family in my imagination for a time.  They awoke once more with new names, but substantially the same, and were my companions in many a solitary walk, the results of which were scribbled down in leisure moments to be poured into my mother’s ever patient and sympathetic ears.