Hagar

Publisher Marketing: CHAPTER I THE PACKET-BOAT "Low Braidge!" The people on deck bent over, some until heads touched knees, others, more exactly calculating, just sufficiently to clear the beams. The canal-boat passed beneath the bridge, and all straightened themselves on their camp-stools. The gentlemen who were smoking put their cigars again between their lips. The two or three ladies resumed book or knitting. The sun was low, and the sycamores and willows fringing the banks cast long shadows across the canal. The northern bank was not so clothed with foliage, and one saw an expanse of bottom land, meadows and cornfields, and beyond, low mountains, purple in the evening light. The boat slipped from a stripe of gold into a stripe of shadow, and from a stripe of shadow into a stripe of gold. The negro and the mule on the towpath were now but a bit of dusk in motion, and now were lit and, so to speak, powdered with gold-dust. Now the rope between boat and towpath showed an arm-thick golden serpent, and now it did not show at all. Now a little cloud of gnats and flies, accompanying the boat, shone in burnished armour and now they put on a mantle of shade. A dark little girl, of twelve years, dark and thin, sitting aft on the deck floor, her long, white-stockinged legs folded decorously under her, her blue gingham skirt spread out, and her Leghorn hat upon her knees, appealed to one of the reading ladies. "Aunt Serena, what is 'evolution'?" Miss Serena Ashendyne laid down her book. "'Evolution, '" she said blankly, "'what is evolution?'" "I heard grandfather say it just now. He said, 'That man Darwin and his evolution'-" "Oh!" said Miss Serena. "He meant a very wicked and irreligious Englishman who wrote a dreadful book." "Was it named 'Evolution'?" "No. I forget just what it is called. 'Beginning'-No! 'Origin of Species.' That was it." "Have we got it in the library at Gilead Balm?" "Heavens! No!" "Why?" "Your grandfather wouldn't let it come into the house. No lady would read it." Contributor Bio:  Johnston, Mary Mary Johnston (November 21, 1870 - May 9, 1936) was an American novelist and women's rights advocate from Virginia. She was one of America's best selling authors during her writing career and had three silent films adapted from her novels. The daughter of an American Civil War soldier who became a successful lawyer, Mary Johnston was born in the small town of Buchanan, Virginia. A small and frail girl, she was educated at home by family and tutors. She grew up with a love of books and was financially independent enough to devote herself to writing. Johnston wrote historical books and novels that often combined romance with history. Her first book Prisoners of Hope (1898) dealt with colonial times in Virginia as did her second novel To Have and to Hold (1900) and 1904's Sir Mortimer. The Goddess of Reason (1907) uses the theme of the French Revolution and in Lewis Rand (1908), the author portrayed political life at the dawn of the 19th century. Mary Johnston. To Have and to Hold was serialized in the The Atlantic Monthly in 1899 and published in 1900 by Houghton Mifflin. The book proved enormously popular and was the bestselling novel in the United States in 1900. Johnston's next work titled Audrey was the 5th bestselling book in the U. S. in 1902, and Sir Mortimer serialized in the Harper's Monthly Magazine from November 1903 through April 1904 and published in 1904. Her best-selling 1911 novel on the American Civil War, The Long Roll, brought her into open conflict with Stonewall Jackson's widow, Mary Anna Jackson. Beyond her native America, Johnston's novels were also very popular in Canada and in England. Three of Johnston's books were adapted to film. Audrey was made into a silent film of the same name in 1916 and her blockbuster work To Have and to Hold was made into a silent film in 1916 and filmed again in 1922. Pioneers of the Old South was adapted to film in 1923 under the title Jamestown. During her long career, in addition to twenty-three novels, Johnston wrote a number of short stories, one drama, and two long narrative poems. She used her fame to advocate women's rights, strongly supporting the women's suffrage movement. Johnston died in 1936, at the age of 65, at her home in Warm Springs, Virginia. She was interred in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Her house at Warm Springs, Three Hills, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. Her Richmond home on Linden Row was listed in 1971.