Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot

I finally finished "Scenes of Clerical Life" yesterday evening -- ending with the beautiful story of "Janet's Repentance". I so much admire the artistry of Eliot in laying out a very complicated tale as if she were simply sitting by the hearth and telling it to us in her own words. The story of Janet is, like all of Eliot's works, utterly inspiring to me. It ends with some sentences about the nature of peace and acceptance that both the Buddha and Jesus would have enjoyed.

Sarah Orne Jewett and George Eliot

Yesterday I continued reading Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life, with its graceful, artistic writing, and I also read a short story Sarah Orne Jewett, "A Winter Courtship" -- a brief, beautiful, and utterly honest tale of two elderly widowed travelers who decide, in the midst of a day's trip from one town to another in Maine in the late 1800's, to marry each other.

Scenes of Clerical Life, by George Eliot

This is a wonderful collection of stories. I just finished "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" and was deeply touched by the lovely sentences and the smoothly described emotions of the story. If it had been a longer story, in novel form, it might be considered one of her finest writings. I especially loved Eliot's use of dialect when the various characters, especially the simple country folk, are speaking.