The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tiverton Tales, by Alice Brown

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Title: Tiverton Tales

Author: Alice Brown

Release Date: January 30, 2007 [EBook #20486]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TIVERTON TALES ***

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TIVERTON TALES

BY ALICE BROWN

[Illustration: Publisher icon]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1899

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY ALICE BROWN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO M. H. R.

A MASTER MAGICIAN

CONTENTS

DOORYARDS

A MARCH WIND

THE MORTUARY CHEST

HORN-O'-THE-MOON

A STOLEN FESTIVAL

A LAST ASSEMBLING

THE WAY OF PEACE

THE EXPERIENCE OF HANNAH PRIME

HONEY AND MYRRH

A SECOND MARRIAGE

THE FLAT-IRON LOT

THE END OF ALL LIVING

TIVERTON TALES

DOORYARDS

Tiverton has breezy, upland roads, and damp, sweet valleys; but should
you tarry there a summer long, you might find it wasteful to take many
excursions abroad. For, having once received the freedom of family
living, you will own yourself disinclined to get beyond dooryards, those
outer courts of domesticity. Homely joys spill over into them, and, when
children are afoot, surge and riot there. In them do the common
occupations of life find niche and channel. While bright weather holds,
we wash out of doors on a Monday morning, the wash-bench in the solid
block of shadow thrown by the house. We churn there, also, at the hour
when Sweet-Breath, the cow, goes afield, modestly unconscious of her own
sovereignty over the time. There are all the varying fortunes of
butter-making recorded. Sometimes it comes merrily to the tune of

"Come, butter, come! Peter stands a-waiting at the gate, Waiting for his
butter-cake. Come, butter, come!"

chanted in time with the dasher; again it doth willfully refuse, and
then, lest it be too cool, we contribute a dash of hot water, or too
hot, and we lend it a dash of cold. Or we toss in a magical handful of
salt, to encourage it. Possibly, if we be not the thr