Read it through once

Its modest title—_Our Village_—was the author’s own choice, and it was to consist of essays and characters and stories, chiefly of country life, in the manner of the _Sketch Book_, but without sentimentality or pathos—two things abhorred by the author—and to be published with or without its author’s name, as it might please the publisher. “At all events,” wrote Miss Mitford to Sir William, “the author has no wish to be _incognita_; so I tell you as a _secret to be told_.”