EBOOK PEMBROKE ***
Produced by Jeff Kaylin
Transcriber's Note:
The images for this text were scanned from the 1894 edition.
Pembroke
Mary E. Wilkins
Harper & Brothers Publishers; New York: 1900
[Illustration: "'It's beautiful,' Rose said"]
Introductory Sketch
_Pembroke_ was originally intended as a study of the human will in
several New England characters, in different phases of disease and
abnormal development, and to prove, especially in the most marked
case, the truth of a theory that its cure depended entirely upon the
capacity of the individual for a love which could rise above all
considerations of self, as Barnabas Thayer's love for Charlotte
Barnard finally did.
While Barnabas Thayer is the most pronounced exemplification of this
theory, and while he, being drawn from life, originally suggested the
scheme of the study, a number of the other characters, notably
Deborah Thayer, Richard Alger, and Cephas Barnard, are instances of
the same spiritual disease. Barnabas to me was as much the victim of
disease as a man with curvature of the spine; he was incapable of
straightening himself to his former stature until he had laid hands
upon a more purely unselfish love than he had ever known, through his
anxiety for Charlotte, and so raised himself to his own level.
When I make use of the term abnormal, I do not mean unusual in any
sense.
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