From a Mournful Villager

"From a Mournful Villager" is a poignant short story by Sarah Orne Jewett that explores themes of loss, community, and the passage of time in a small New England village. Through the eyes of a villager reflecting on the changes in their community and the lingering memories of those who have passed, Jewett captures the essence of rural life and the bonds that tie people together. The narrative is imbued with a sense of nostalgia, as the protagonist grapples with both personal grief and the collective sorrow of a community facing transformation. Jewett's richly descriptive prose evokes the beauty of the landscape while highlighting the emotional depth of her characters, making it a poignant meditation on the nature of belonging and remembrance.

• Short story

								
Lately I have been thinking, with much sorrow, of the approaching
extinction of front yards, and of the type of New England village
character and civilization with which they are associated. Formerly,
because I lived in an old-fashioned New England village, it would have
been hard for me to imagine that there were parts of the country where
the Front yard, as I knew it, was not in fashion, and that Grounds
(however small) had taken its place. No matter how large a piece of land
lay in front of a house in old times, it was still a front yard, in
spite of noble dimension and the skill of practiced gardeners.

There are still a good many examples of the old manner of out-of-door
life and customs, as well as a good deal of the old-fashioned provincial
society, left in the eastern parts of the New England States; but put
side by side with the society that is American rather than provincial,
one discovers it to be in a small minority. The representative United
States citizen will be, or already is, a Westerner, and his instincts
and ways of looking at things have certain characteristics of their own
which are steadily growing more noticeable.

For many years New England was simply a bit of Old England transplanted.
We all can remember elderly people whose ideas were wholly under the
influence of their English ancestry. It is hardly more than a hundred
years since we were English colonies, and not independent United States,
and the customs and ideas of the mother country were followed from force
of habit. Now one begins to see a difference; the old traditions have
had time to almost die out even in the most conservative and least
changed towns, and a new element has come in. The true characteristics
of American society, as I have said, are showing themselves more and
more distinctly to the westward of New England, and come back to it in a
tide that steadily sweeps away the old traditions. It rises over the
heads of the prim and stately idols before which our grandfathers and
grandmothers bowed down and worshiped, and which we ourselves were at
least taught to walk softly by as they toppled on their thrones.

One cannot help wondering what a lady of the old school will be like a
hundred years from now! But at any rate she will not be in heart and
thought and fashion of good breeding as truly an Englishwoman as if she
had never stepped out of Great Britain. If one of our own elderly ladies
were suddenly dropped into the midst of provincial English society, she
would be quite at home; but west of her own Hudson River she is lucky if
she does not find herself behind the times, and almost a stranger and a
foreigner.

And yet from the first there was a little difference, and the colonies
were New England and not Old. In some ways more radical, yet in some
ways more conservative, than the people across the water, they showed a
new sort of flower when they came into bloom in this new climate and
soil. In the old days there had not been time for the family ties to be
broken and forgotten. Instead of the unknown English men and women who
are our sixth and seventh cousins now, they had first and second cousins
then; but there was little communication between one country and the
other, and the mutual interest in every-day affairs had to fade out
quickly. A traveler was a curiosity, and here, even between the villages
themselves, there was far less intercourse than we can believe possible.
People stayed on their own ground; their horizons were of small
circumference, and their whole interest and thought were spent upon
their own land, their own neighbors, their own affairs, while they not
only were contented with this state of things but encouraged it. One has
only to look at the high-walled pews of the old churches, at the high
fences of the town gardens, and at even the strong fortifications around
some family lots in the burying-grounds, to be sure of this. The
interviewer was not besought and encouraged in those days,--he was
defied. In that quarter, at least, they had the advantage of us. Their
interest was as real and heartfelt in each other's affairs as ours, let
us hope; but they never allowed idle curiosity to show itself in the
world's market-place, shameless and unblushing.

There is so much to be said in favor of our own day, and the men and
women of our own time, that a plea for a recognition of the quaintness
and pleasantness of village life in the old days cannot seem unwelcome,
or without deference to all that has come with the later years of ease
and comfort, or of discovery in the realms of mind or matter. We are
beginning to cling to the elderly people who are so different from
ourselves, and for this reason: we are paying them instinctively the
honor that is due from us to our elders and betters; they have that
grand prestige and dignity that only comes with age; they are like old
wines, perhaps no better than many others when they were young, but now
after many years they have come to be worth nobody knows how many
dollars a dozen, and the connoisseurs make treasures of the few bottles
of that vintage which are left.

It was a restricted and narrowly limited life in the old days. Religion,
or rather sectarianism, was apt to be simply a matter of inheritance,
and there was far more bigotry in every cause and question,--a fiercer
partisanship; and because there were fewer channels of activity, and
those undivided into specialties, there was a whole-souled concentration
of energy that was as efficient as it was sometimes narrow and
short-sighted. People were more contented in the sphere of life to which
it had pleased God to call them, and they do not seem to have been so
often sorely tempted by the devil with a sight of the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them. We are more likely to busy ourselves with
finding things to do than in doing with our might the work that is in
our hands already. The disappearance of many of the village front yards
may come to be typical of the altered position of woman, and mark a
stronghold on her way from the much talked-of slavery and subjection to
a coveted equality. She used to be shut off from the wide acres of the
farm, and had no voice in the world's politics; she must stay in the
house, or only hold sway out of doors in this prim corner of land where
she was queen. No wonder that women clung to their rights in their
flower-gardens then, and no wonder that they have grown a little
careless of them now, and that lawn mowers find so ready a sale. The
whole world is their front yard nowadays!

       *       *       *       *       *

There might be written a history of front yards in New England which
would be very interesting to read. It would end in a treatise upon
landscape gardening and its possibilities, and wild flights of
imagination about the culture of plants under glass, the application of
artificial heat in forcing, and the curious mingling and development of
plant life, but it would begin in the simple time of the early

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