Nick of the Woods eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Nick of the Woods.

Nick of the Woods eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 486 pages of information about Nick of the Woods.
that “final destruction” which it pleases so many men, against all probability, if not against all possibility, to predict as a certain future event.  Had the accusation been confined to the reviewers, he might not, perhaps, have thought it safe to complain; but currency was given to it in a quarter which renders a disclaimer the more reasonable or the less presumptuous.  One may contend with a brother author who dares not resist the verdict of the critics.  In the English edition of the novel, published at the same time as the American, in a preface furnished by Mr. Ainsworth, the distinguished author of “Rookwood,” “Crichton,” &c. &c., to whom he is indebted for many polite and obliging expressions respecting it, it is hinted, hypothetically, that the writer’s views were “coloured by national antipathy, and by a desire to justify the encroachments of his countrymen upon the persecuted natives, rather than by a reasonable estimate of the subject.”  The accused notices this fancy, however injurious he first felt it to be, less to refute than to smile at it.  He prefers to make a more philosophic and practical application.  The real inference to be drawn is, that he has succeeded very ill in this, somewhat essential, portion of his plan,—­on the principle that the composition must be amiss, the design of which is so readily misapprehended.  He may plead guilty to the defect; but he cannot admit the charge to have had any foundation in truth.

The writer confesses to have felt a little concern at an imputation, which was once faintly attempted to be made, he scarcely now remembers by whom, that in the character of Nathan Slaughter he intended to throw a slur upon the peaceful Society of Friends, of which Nathan is described as having been an unworthy member.  This notion is undeserving of serious challenge.  The whole object was here to portray the peculiar characteristics of a class of men, very limited, of course, in number, but found, in the old Indian days, scattered, at intervals, along the extreme frontier of every State, from New York to Georgia; men in whom the terrible barbarities of the savages, suffered through their families, or their friends and neighbours, had wrought a change of temper as strange as fearful.  That passion is the mightiest which overcomes the most powerful restraints and prostrates the strongest barriers; and there was a dramatic propriety, at least, in associating with such a character as Nathan’s, obstacles of faith and habit, which gave the greater force to his deeds and a deeper mystery to his story.  No one conversant with the history of border affairs can fail to recollect some one or more instances of solitary men, bereaved fathers or orphaned sons, the sole survivors, sometimes, of exterminated households, who remained only to devote themselves to lives of vengeance; and “Indian-hating” (which implied the fullest indulgence of a rancorous animosity no blood could appease) was so far from being an uncommon passion in some particular districts,

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Nick of the Woods from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.