The sun shone with a warm yellow light on the Upper Town with its girdle of gray wall and on the red flag that drowsed above the citadel and was a friendly lustre on the tinned roofs of the Lower Town while away off to the south and east and west wandered the purple hills and the farmlit plains in such dewy shadow and effulgence as would have been enough to make the heaviest heart glad.

A Chance Acquaintance.

A Chance Acquaintance is a realist novel that tells a story of a small-town girl Kitty Ellison, who goes on vacation with her family on a tour around north states and Quebec. During the holiday Miss Kitty meets Mr. Arbuton from Boston, narrow-minded uptight gentleman, often mistaken for an Englishman because of his manners. Their introduction happens under a bit of a strange circumstances and as the time passes Kitty is being more and more pushed into his direction which is creating a lot of unpredictable situations. William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author, literary critic, and playwright. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own prolific writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day", and the novels The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Traveler from Altruria. Howells is known to be the father of American realism, and a denouncer of the sentimental novel. He was the first American author to bring a realist aesthetic to the literature of the United States. His stories of Boston upper crust life set in the 1850s are highly regarded among scholars of American fiction.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

In "A Chance Acquaintance" the familiar characters of "Their Wedding Journey" reappear, but the principal roles are given to Miss Kitty Ellison and her Bostonian adorer, Mr. Arbuton. Readers who can appreciate the sentiment, the style, and the nice discrimination of character, with its quiet humor and good-natured hits at Mr. Arbuton, who was not exactly Mr. Ellison's ideal of a Bostonman, and still further from that of some of our Southern brethren, will find it very interesting and suggestive. The beautiful style and graphic description give an interest and charm to this book, which holds the attention without the aid of startling incidents or sensational extravagance.