How the children leave us, and no traces Linger of that smiling angel-band, Gone, for ever gone, and in their places Weary men and anxious women stand. ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR
PREFACE
If a book by an author who must call herself a veteran should be takenup by readers of a younger generation, they are begged to consider thefirst few chapters as a sort of prologue, introduced for the sake ofthose of elder years, who were kind enough to be interested in thedomestic politics of the Mohuns and the Underwoods.
Continuations are proverbially failures, and yet it is perhaps aconsequence of the writer's realization of characters that some seem asif they could not be parted with, and must be carried on in the mind,and not only have their after-fates described, but their minds andopinions under the modifications of advancing years and alteredcircumstances.
Turner and other artists have been known literally to see colours inabsolutely different hues as they grew older, and so no doubt it iswith thinkers. The outlines may be the same, the tints are insensiblymodified and altered, and the effect thus far changed.
Thus it is with the writers of fiction. The young write in full sympathywith, as well as for, the young, they have a pensive satisfaction infeeling and depicting the full pathos of a tragedy, and on the otherhand they delight in their own mirth, and fully share it with thebeings of their imagination, or they work out great questions with theunhesitating decision of their youth.
But those who write in elder years look on at their young people,not with inner sympathy but from the outside. Their affections andcomprehension are with the fathers, mothers, and aunts; they dread,rather than seek, piteous scenes, and they have learnt that there aretwo sides to a question, that there are many stages in human life, andthat the success or failure of early enthusiasm leaves a good deal moreyet to come.
Thus the vivid fancy passes away, which the young are carried alongwith, and the older feel refreshed by; there is still a sense ofexperience, and a pleasure in tracing the perspective from anotherpoint of sight, where what was once distant has become near at hand, theearnest of many a day-dream has been gained, and more than one ideal hasbeen tried, and merits and demerits have become apparent.
And thus it is hoped that the Long Vacation may not be devoid ofinterest for readers who have sympathized in early days with Beechcroft,Stoneborough, and Vale Leston, when they were peopled with the outcomeof a youthful mind, and that they may be ready to look with interest onthe perplexities and successes attending on the matured characters inafter years.
If they will feel as if they were on a visit to friends grown older,with their children about them, and if the young will forgive the seeingwith elder eyes, and observing instead of participating, that is all theveteran author would ask.