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Marian Chester will be home for Christmas--if things go according to plan After visiting in the West. Marian boards a train for Boston, cradling a lunch basket. To pass the time, she sketches her fellow passengers, including the handsome man across the isle.Stuart Lynde, a lawyer, notices Marian and wonders if her pretty head is a s empty as the girls he knows. He has nearly despaired of ever finding a woman of quality.

But neither of them can guess how much unforeseen delay--and the contents of Marion's basket--may change more than an earthly destination

"The Day before Christmas" is but one in this collection of heartwarming, faith-filled stories of days gone by.

Heartwarming stories of faith and love by Grace Livingston Hill's aunt--Isabella Alden. Each book is similar in style and tone to Hill's and is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

378 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 1997

23 people want to read

About the author

Pansy

338 books31 followers
Note: In her lifetime, Isabella Macdonald Alden was usually published under the pseudonym Pansy, and occasionally under the name Mrs. G.R. Alden.

Aunt to Grace Livingston Hill

The sixth of seven children born to Isaac and Myra Spafford Macdonald, of Rochester, New York, Isabella Macdonald received her early education from her father, who home-schooled her, and gave her a nickname - "Pansy" - that she would use for many of her publications. As a girl, she kept a daily journal, critiqued by her father, and she published her first story - The Old Clock - in a village paper when she was ten years old.

Macdonald's education continued at the Oneida Seminary, the Seneca Collegiate Institute, and the Young Ladies Institute, all in New York. It was at the Oneida Seminary that she met her long-time friend (and eventual co-author), Theodosia Toll, who secretly submitted one of Macdonald's manuscripts in a competition, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the publication of her first book, Helen Lester, in 1865.

Macdonald also met her future husband, the Rev. Gustavus Rossenberg Alden, at the Oneida Seminary, and the two were married in 1866. Now Isabella Macdonald Alden, the newly-married minister's wife followed her husband as his postings took them around the country, dividing her time between writing, church duties, and raising her son Raymond (born 1873).

A prolific author, who wrote approximately one hundred novels from 1865 to 1929, and co-authored ten more, Alden was also actively involved in the world of children's and religious periodicals, publishing numerous short stories, editing the Sunday Juvenile Pansy from 1874-1894, producing Sunday School lessons for The Westminster Teacher for twenty years, and working on the editorial staff of various other magazines (Trained Motherhood, The Christian Endeavor).

Highly influenced by her Christian beliefs, much of Alden's work was explicitly moral and didactic, and often found its way into Sunday School libraries. It was also immensely popular, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with an estimated 100,000 copies of Alden's books sold, in 1900.

Information taken from:

readseries.com

isabellamacdonaldalden.com

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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Profile Image for Debbie Sue.
240 reviews1 follower
May 2, 2020
well they are not as good as GLH but over all good reading. I would read it again and i would recommend it
Profile Image for Gina Andrews.
251 reviews2 followers
January 15, 2023
Written over 100 years ago, comes a collection of stories about faith and and being faithful.
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