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PREFACE.
My publishers, whose judgment I hold in high
regard, indicate that there should be a Preface.
It might not be entirely courteous to the reader
to omit it. So, as I have great respect for my
readers also, there shall surely be a Preface.
Yet, as I have little to say, I trust to be excused
if I say little, and if that little should not be remarkable.
Portions of this volume, in other forms, the
public have already seen. Still, I flatter myself,
they may not be wholly unworthy of another
interview; since it is a poor face that will
not bear twice looking at. With other parts, it
is not possible they should be acquainted, as I
have been but recently introduced myself. But
I am doubtful whether the new will be found
better than the old. And as housekeepers are
wont to apologize for presenting the same dish
all that may appear at this time upon my
table, like young Franklin, who advised his father
to “say grace over the whole cask.”
Maternal love is deemed neither idle nor unwise,
if it tell stories when graver thought has
wearied. To passionate or high-wrought fiction,
mine have no pretension. It can be simply said
that their elements are truthful, and their tendency
salutary. Should they be so fortunate as to
deepen any of those sympathies that swell the
great tide of human happiness, and hope, the
writer will never regret that “to point a moral,
she has adorned a tale.”
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