Longfellows last excursion into prose fiction, Kavanaugh is a village tale that has all the ingredients of a good New England recipe: old and young maids, lotharios, clergymen, tradesmen, a schoolteacher, a magazinist, a taxidermist, three suicides, runaways, travelers, odd characters, good and bad characters. Kavanagh is simply a delightful, charming account of a small world within itself; a tale of the way life used to be. It is a souvenir of the past.