I said that I did not know Mrs. Liscom was going to take boarders; I was very much surprised. "I suppose she thought she would earn some money and have some extra things," said Mrs. Jones. "It must have been that," said Mrs. Ketchum, panting -- she was almost out of breath -- "for, of course, the Liscoms don't need the money." I laughed and said I thought not. I felt a little pride about it, because Mrs. Liscom was a second cousin of my husband, and he used to think a great deal of her. "They must own that nice place clear, if it ain't going to burn to the ground, and have something in the bank besides," assented Mrs. Peter Jones.
Author Biography
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852 - 1930) was a prominent 19th-century American author. Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. Her career as a short story writer launched in 1881 when she took first place in a short story contest with her submission "The Ghost Family." When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. Her best known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph. She produced more than two dozen volumes of published short stories and novels. She is best known for two collections of stories, A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Her stories deal mostly with New England life and are among the best of their kind. Freeman is also remembered for her novel Pembroke (1894) and she contributed a notable chapter to the collaborative novel The Whole Family (1908). Through her different genres of work including children's stories, poems and short stories, Mary Wilkins Freeman sought to demonstrate her values as a feminist. During the time which she was writing, she did this in nonconventional ways; for example, she diverged from making her female characters weak and in need of help which was a common trope in literature.
