Illustration from the 1919 publication.

"...she had the gift which so many women lack, of being able to make themselves and their houses belong entirely to a guest's pleasure - that charming surrender for the moment of themselves and whatever belongs to them, so that they make a part of one's own life that can never be forgotten. Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading...Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart." ~ The Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett