St. James Episcopal Church

St James Episcopal Church


Early photo by Kate Matthews


http://www.stjamespewee.org/history.asp

 
Recent views of the church, including the Stile where Malcolm proposed to the Little Colonel

From The Little Colonel at Boarding School: Chapter 16  (illustration from the book):

It was a pretty picture she left on the page, of the winter woods, of the old stile leading into the adjoining churchyard, where in almost a thicket of bare dogwood-trees and lilac-bushes stood the little Episcopal church, built like the one next the manse, of picturesque gray stone. The walls were aglow with the brilliant red and orange berries of the bittersweet, which hung even from the eaves and cornices, and from every place where the graceful vines could trail and twist and clamber……

She did not know how to put into words the vague, undefined feeling that she had, that he must not come to her with such speeches until he had won his spurs and received his accolade. It was her helplessness to answer as she wished that made her spring up impatiently and say in her most imperious, Little Colonel-like way, “Didn’t you heah me tell you to stop talking that way, Malcolm MacIntyre? Of co’se I care for you. I’ve always liked you, and I think you’re one of the nicest boys I know, but I won’t if you keep on that way when I tell you to stop. You might at least wait till you come back from college and let me see what sawt of a man you’ve turned out to be!”

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Lloyd,” he began, but just then the mistletoe gatherers came running down the path toward them, and Ranald’s whistle brought the others from the churchyard with their bittersweet. Lloyd flung away her nutshells, and standing on the top of the stile brushed her dress with her handkerchief. Malcolm, swinging his gun to his shoulder, picked up her basket and walked beside her in conscious silence, as the merry party strolled on toward the depot.

Several times she glanced up shyly at him, saying to herself again that he was certainly one of the nicest boys she knew, the most courteous, the most attractive, with the same beauty of face and polish of manner that had made him such a winning little Knight of Kentucky. But the little pin he had worn as the badge of that knighthood, that stood for the “wearing the white flower of a blameless life,” was no longer on the lapel of his coat. He had laid it aside more than a year ago, saying that he had outgrown that child’s play, and that it was impossible for a fellow of his age to live up to it.

As Lloyd noticed its absence she was glad that she had answered him as she did. But almost with the same breath came the recollection that he had said, “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Lloyd,” and she wondered with a quicker heart-throb if it were really so that she had power to wield such an influence over him, and she wondered also, if she had given him the curl as he asked, and told him that she wanted him to wear the white flower again and live up to its meaning, if he would have done it for her sake.

 This scene is referred to again and again later in the books, especially
http://www.littlecolonel.com/Books/ChristmasVacation/Chapter09.htm 
http://www.littlecolonel.com/Books/MaidofHonor/Chapter15.htm 
http://www.littlecolonel.com/Books/KnightComesRiding/Chapter10.htm