The Love of Parson Lord and Other Stories — Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

“There are few writers of short stories whose work has such distinction as that of Miss Mary E. Wilkins. Much as we admire the many good qualities in her longer novels, especially Pembroke, we feel that she is at her best in those dainty little sketches of New England country life which first gained our attention. The blended humour and pathos of the old who are young in all but years, the dignified reserve of the New England character, its naive cunning and mysterious simplicity, and the overpowering and inexplicable force of love that will find out its way are the chief subjects of the stories which make up this volume, The Love of Parson Lord and Other Stories. To them Miss Wilkins brings her vivid pictorial style, which is full of colour but subdued and decorative. Miss Wilkins is at her best when she is describing some simple idealist who makes a useless but heroic attempt to withstand the natural development of character. Such an one is Parson Lord, who has dedicated his daughter to the service of the Lord, but is so far aware of the futility of his act that he ministers to her worldly taste by stealth with mysterious presents of dolls and fine raiment. Such an one again is Cornelia Pezor -- described as having “thrust herself so far behind the trimmed and burning lamp of love that she had become, as it were, a wedding guest of all life” -- who tries to tutor her younger sister's love for romance by sending her imaginary love-letters, the supposed writer of which is such a pure and exalted person that Cornelia feels that her sister is safe from declining on any baser mortal. There is nothing new in Miss Wilkins' latest book. It is what we have been led to expect from the writer of A Far-Away Melody, but it is for that all the more welcome.”

-- The Speaker, the Liberal Review, Volume 1 [1900]