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Seven Wonders of Sandwich
Cornelius Weygandt (1871 -
1957), a long-time Sandwich summer resident, was Professor of
Contemporary English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania,
an authority on the Irish literacy renaissance, a champion of W. B.
Yeats, and a friend of Robert Frost. He also was an authority on
Americana: old customs, folkways, homecrafts, tools; much of this
information he obtained by attending country auctions.
There have been few Sandwich summer residents who have understood
the beauty of this town and none who have chronicled it so well as
Cornelius Weygandt. His four New Hampshire books, The White Hills
(1934), New Hampshire Neighbors (1937), November Rowen
(1941), and The Heart of New Hampshire (1944), have always
been treasured by local people who knew him. In these books Weygandt
celebrates the local landscape and the timeless rural values he
found among his neighbors: their perseverance, their thrift, their
hard work, their generosity, and their sense of humor.
This new anthology, which includes selections from all four books,
will give the contemporary reader a glimpse of what Sandwich was
like in the first half of the 20th century, as seen by one "who
holds with the old ways." It will also appeal to bird lovers and to
all northern New Englanders who cherish their short summers and who
can hear "winter comin' in the moan of the August wind." |
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