A foundling left at a village post office in Connecticut grows up among the people who sort the mail and know everybody's business. Wright was known for her nature books and wrote fiction on the side, and the New England village in it is observed rather than invented. This edition adds fifty-eight plates of painting from 1745 to 1909, among them works by Edward Lamson Henry, Edvard Munch and William Powell Frith, with one restored and coloured illustration in the text.