BEYOND THE GATES.
BY
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,
AUTHOR OF “THE GATES AJAR,” “THE STORY OF AVIS,” ETC., ETC.
Nineteenth Thousand.
BOSTON:
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1884.
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Copyright, 1883,
By ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
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TO MY BROTHER,
STUART,
WHO PASSED BEYOND, AUGUST 29, 1883.
NOTE.
It should be said, that, at the time of the departure of him to whosememory this little book is consecrated, the work was already in press;and that these pages owe more to his criticism than can be acknowledgedhere.
E. S. P.
Gloucester, Massachusetts,
September, 1883.
BEYOND THE GATES.
I.
I had been ill for several weeks with what they called brain fever. Theevents which I am about to relate happened on the fifteenth day of myillness.
Before beginning to tell my story, it may not be out of place to say afew words about myself, in order to clarify to the imagination of thereader points which would otherwise involve numerous explanatorydigressions, more than commonly misplaced in a tale dealing with thematerials of this.
I am a woman forty years of age. My father was a clergyman; he had beenmany years dead. I was living, at the time I refer to, in my mother’shouse in a factory town in Massachusetts. The town need not be more{6}particularly mentioned, nor genuine family names given, for obviousreasons. I was the oldest of four children; one of my sisters wasmarried, one was at home with us, and there was a boy at college.
I was an unmarried, but not an unhappy woman. I had reached a very busy,and sometimes I hoped a not altogether valueless, middle age. I had usedlife and loved it. Beyond the