Little Fishers: and Their Nets — Edition Insights

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In Category - Young Readers Enchanted Adventures

Authors: Pansy, 1841-1930 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Christian life -- Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Temperance -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Conversion -- Juvenile fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 95,842

Reading time 417 min

Text sections 11

This digital edition of Little Fishers: and Their Nets — Edition Insights is described by source-level measurements including 95,842 words, 6 hr 57 min estimated reading time, and 11 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 18.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Christian life -- Juvenile fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #45536

In Pansy's 1887 novel, young Nettie Decker navigates family strain, temperance, and religious conversion through small acts of influence. The text contrasts domestic anxiety with moments of unexpected tenderness, as when a child's accident softens the rebellious Norm.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg45536

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CHAPTER I. THE DECKERS' HOME 7

CHAPTER II. BEGINNING HER LIFE 24

CHAPTER III. THE TRUTH IS TOLD 43

CHAPTER IV. NEW FRIENDS 63

CHAPTER V. A GREAT UNDERTAKING 85

CHAPTER VI. HOW IT SUCCEEDED 106

CHAPTER VII. LONG STORIES TO TELL 125

CHAPTER VIII. A SABBATH TO REMEMBER 143

CHAPTER IX. A BARGAIN AND A PROMISE 164

CHAPTER X. PLEASURE AND DISAPPOINTMENT 179

CHAPTER XI. A COMPLETE SUCCESS 204

CHAPTER XII. AN UNEXPECTED HELPER 226

CHAPTER XIII. THE LITTLE PICTURE MAKERS 240

CHAPTER XIV. THE CONCERT 257

CHAPTER XV. A WILL AND A WAY 271

CHAPTER XVI. AN ORDEAL 288

CHAPTER XVII. THE FLOWER PARTY 304

CHAPTER XVIII. A SATISFACTORY EVENING 320

CHAPTER XIX. READY TO TRY 334

CHAPTER XX. THE WAY MADE PLAIN 351

CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW ENTERPRISE 365

CHAPTER XXII. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE 382

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CROWNING WONDER 400

CHAPTER XXIV. THE PAST AND PRESENT 418

Little Fishers: and Their Nets.

JOE DECKER gave his chair a noisy shove backward from the table, over the uneven floor, shambled across the space between it and the kitchen door, a look of intense disgust on his face, then stopped for his good-morning speech:

"You may as well know, first as last, that I've sent for Nan. I've stood this kind of thing just exactly as long as I'm going to. There ain't many men, I can tell you, who would have stood it so long. Such a meal as that! Ain't fit for a decent dog!

"Nan is coming in the afternoon stage. There must be some place fixed up for her to sleep in. Understand, now, that has _got_ to be done, and I won't have no words about it."

Then he slammed the door, and went away.

Yes, he was talking to his wife! She could remember the time when he used to linger in the door, talking to her, so many last words to say, and when at last he would turn away with a kind "Well, good-by, Mary! Don't work too hard."

But that seemed ages ago to the poor woman who was left this morning in the wretched little room with the door slammed between her and her husband. She did not look as though she had life enough left to make words about anything. She sat in a limp heap in one of the broken chairs, her bared arms lying between the folds of a soiled and ragged apron.

Not an old woman, yet her hair was gray, and her cheeks were faded, and her eyes looked as though they had not closed in quiet restful sleep for months. She had not combed her hair that morning; and thin and faded as it was, it hung in straggling locks about her face.

I don't suppose you ever saw a kitchen just like that one! It was heated, not only by the fierce sun which streamed in at the two uncurtained eastern windows, but by the big old stove, which could smoke, not only, and throw out an almost unendurable heat on a warm morning like this, when heat was not wanted, but had a way at all times of refusing to heat the oven, and indeed had fits of sullenness when it would not "draw" at all.

This was one of the mornings when the fire had chosen to burn; it had swallowed the legs and back of a rickety chair which the mistress in desperation had stuffed in, when she was waiting for the teakettle to boil, and now that there was nothing to boil, or fry, and no need for heat, the stump of wood, wet by yesterday's rain, had dried itself and chosen to burn.

The west windows opened into a side yard, and the sound of children's voices in angry dispute, and the smell of a pigsty, came in together, and seemed equally discouraging to the wilted woman in the chair.

The sun was already pretty high in the sky, yet the breakfast-table still stood in the middle of the room.

I don't know as I can describe that table to you. It was a square one, unpainted, and stained with something red, and something green, and spotted with grease, and spotted with black, rubbed from endless hot kettles set on it, or else from one kettle set on it endless times; it must have been that way, for now that I think of it, there was but one kettle in that house. No tablecloth covered the stains; there was a cracked plate which held a few crusts of very stale bread, and a teacup about a third full of molasses, in which several flies were struggling. More flies covered the bread crusts, and swam in a little mess of what had been butter, but was now oil, and these were the only signs of food.

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The novel opens with a household poised between tension and tenderness: Nettie Decker waits on the doorstep, her mother hovers between door and window, and a neighbor watches with misgivings—all because of one boy's lateness. Pansy builds suspense not through dramatic events but through the quiet, almost physical weight of anxiety shared across kitchens and doorways. The night is resolved not by confrontation but by the sound of cheery whistling, a detail that signals relief without erasing the underlying worry.

This pattern of domestic crisis followed by small reconciliations recurs throughout the excerpts. When Susie pitches headfirst from a kitchen window, the accident becomes an occasion for Norm—the feared bad influence—to carry her gently, wet brown paper on her head, and earn her sudden, inexplicable favor. The narrative voice remains alert to such contradictions, noting that Norm was “frightened into love and tenderness.”

Waiting and Watching: The Weight of Unspoken Worry

The excerpts repeatedly place characters in postures of waiting and watching. Nettie sits on the doorstep, her heart sinking; Mrs. Decker peers from door to window, unable to rest; Mrs. Job Smith looks from her own door, fearing her son will be led into mischief. These parallel vigils create a network of anxiety that binds the households together. Pansy does not describe the boys' actions directly—instead, she lets the women's silent observations carry the tension. The night air is “lovely,” but the mothers' hearts throb with unnamed dread. When Jerry and Norm finally appear, the relief is almost anticlimactic: Jerry whistles, and “all that happy company went to their beds.” The pattern suggests that the real drama lies not in what the boys do but in how the women imagine and endure the waiting.

Accidents as Turning Points: Susie's Fall and Norm's Change

Susie's fall from the kitchen window is the most vivid incident in the excerpts. The scene shifts abruptly from Nettie's planning to “hurry and confusion,” with Mrs. Smith, Job Smith, and Sarah Jane flying to help. Yet it is Norm who stoops over the limp child, carries her inside, and later, at her demand, tramps up and down the room holding her. The narrative voice notes that Susie “took an unaccountable and ever increasing fancy for Norm,” and that Norm was “frightened into love and tenderness.” The accident does not reform him through moral lecture but through physical care: he wets brown paper, holds a cup, pushes a chair. Pansy leaves open whether Susie is a witch or a selfish little girl, but the effect is clear—the crisis creates a bond that words could not.

The Language of Influence: Coaxing, Holding, and Letting Go

Throughout the excerpts, influence is described in physical and hesitant terms. Nettie “studied if there were not ways in which she might coax Norm to go to church.” Jerry slips his hand through Norm's arm and draws him home with “never so slight a pressure.” The minister's invitation is relayed secondhand. Even Susie's command—“I want Norm to carry me”—is a form of influence, one that Norm accepts willingly. The novel's title, Little Fishers: and Their Nets, suggests a deliberate metaphor: these characters are learning to cast and draw, to hold and release. The excerpts show that the nets are not sermons but small, repeated acts of waiting, carrying, and coaxing. The most effective influence, Pansy implies, is the one that does not announce itself.

Readers attentive to the novel's structure will notice how Pansy uses parallel scenes—two nights of waiting, two accidents (the fall and the earlier lateness)—to build a rhythm of crisis and quiet resolution. The excerpts offer no grand conversion, only incremental shifts: a boy who stays home, a girl who fancies her carrier. The title's fishing metaphor invites the reader to watch for the nets being cast, not the fish already caught.

That rainy afternoon, Nettie’s quiet persistence in Little Fishers stayed with me—how she changed Norm not through argument but by being there. Flipping pages, I wondered what happens when that gentle influence carries into different conflicts, more modern worries. Then I drifted, almost without choosing, into The Carter Girls — Key Ideas to Explore, and found that same unspoken steadiness, waiting patiently between the lines.