Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by DavidPrice,
SCENES AND CHARACTERS,
OR,
Eighteen Months at Beechcroft
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YOUNGE
AUTHOR OF ‘THE HEIR OFREDCLYFFE,’ ‘THE TWO GUARDIANS,’ETC.
FIFTHEDITION
ILLUSTRATEDBY W. J. HENNESSY
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1889
Allrights reserved
p.vPREFACE
Of those who are invited to pay avisit to Beechcroft, there are some who, honestly acknowledgingthat amusement is their object, will be content to feel withLilias, conjecture with Jane, and get into scrapes with Phyllis,without troubling themselves to extract any moral from theirproceedings; and to these the Mohun family would only apologisefor having led a very humdrum life during the eighteen monthsspent in their company.
There may, however, be more unreasonable visitors, who,professing only to come as parents and guardians, expectentertainment for themselves, as well as instruction for thosewho had rather it was out of sight,—look for antiques incarved cherry-stones,—and require plot, incident, andcatastrophe in a chronicle of small beer.
To these the Mohuns beg respectfully to observe, that theyhope their examples may not be altogether p. videvoid ofindirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that theylived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe thatthe maxim which has influenced the delineation of the differentScenes and Characters is, that feeling, unguided andunrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the simpleendeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to thehighest acts of self-devotion.
New Court, Beechcroft,
18thJanuary.
p.viiPREFACE (1886)
Perhaps this book is an instance tobe adduced in support of the advice I have often given to youngauthors—not to print before they themselves are old enoughto do justice to their freshest ideas.
Not that I can lay claim to its being a production of tenderand interesting youth. It was my second actual publication,and I believe I was of age before it appeared—but I see nowthe failures that more experience might have enabled me to avoid;and I would not again have given it to the world if the samecharacters recurring in another story had not excited a certaindesire to see their first start.
In fact they have been more or less my life-longcompanions. An almost solitary child, with periodicalvisits to the Elysium of a large family, i