Written by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Copyrighted 1894

This novel was first published in serial form in The Atlantic Monthly from January - October 1895.

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 27, 1895:

"...the story bears all the distinctive characteristics of the New England novel, or, what would be a more correct designation, a pen and ink picture of some phases of the New England character. It is fiction, but it is not a novel: for it is not a picture of life as it is, but rather the delineation of a life which represents an aspiration, rather than a reality. As such it has its lessons the same as any other allegory. The story is told with strength.

Emanuel Bayard is a divinity student in a New England college town, and when he has completed his course he goes out to his chosen work, which is among the poor and the lost in the sea coast town of Windover. He begins his labors in the locality by thrashing a big drunken brute who was maltreating his own child, and wins the love and regard of the brute for all subsequent time. He is too much of a Christian and too little of a theologian to suit the old church for which he was intended, and so he takes up mission work in Angel alley, the worst and most God-forsaken quarter of the town, and there establishes his mission."