Loitering in Pleasant Paths

This is the truthful history of the foreign life of an American family whose main object in "going on a pilgrimage" was the restoration of health to one of its members. In seeking and finding the lost treasure, we found so much else which enriched us for all time, that, in the telling of it, I have been embarrassed by a plethora of materials. I have described some of the things we wanted to see - as we saw them, - writing con amore, but with such manifold strayings from the beaten track into by-paths and over moors, and in such homely, familiar phrase, that I foresee criticism from the disciples of routine and the sedate students of chronology, topography and general statistics. Mary Virginia Terhune (née Hawes, 1830-1922), also known by her penname Marion Harland, was an American author who was prolific and bestselling in both fiction and non-fiction genres. Her real interest lay in fiction writing, but she initially was unsuccessful in selling her works to magazines. At sixteen, Hawes secretly began work on her first novel, while continuing to try to sell stories to magazines. At the time of her death, Terhune had published twenty-five novels, twenty-five homemaking books, three volumes of short stories, and more than a dozen books on travel, colonial history, and biography, as well as numerous essays, short stories, and articles for magazines and newspapers.[4] She passed her love of writing on to her surviving children, all of whom became writers.