TO THE READER.
At last I have consented. I give up. I can hold out no
longer. Yielding to the suggestions of Longfellow, Allibone,
and I know not how many others, I have consented to write
one more story.
Not being satisfied with the doings of my earlier manhood,
Logan, Seventy-Six, Randolph, Errata, Brother Jonathan, Rachel
Dyer, Authorship, &c. &c. &c., and having little time and
no heart for a proper revision of the whole, though constantly
urged to the work by a troublesome conscience, I have at last
compounded the matter in this way, at the urgent solicitation of
these friends, that I may leave something behind to justify their
good opinion of me, and something that my children's children
may neither be ashamed of, nor sorry for, hereafter.
Having long entertained a notion that women have souls —
or something of the sort, call them what you may; that they
have not only a right to think for themselves, but to act for
themselves, and take the consequences, here and hereafter, without
being accountable to us, any more than we are to them; and
that marriage is not always the best thing, nor the one thing
needful for them, whatever it may be to us; I have written
this tale for illustration.
Though not properly a religious novel, I trust the reader will
find in it enough religious feeling, without sectarianism, for
every-day use, and not enough to be troublesome, or obtrusive,
or unpalatable; or, in other words, “none to hurt” — as the
man said, when asked if a mutual friend had not grown pious.
Taking advantage of incidents, which occurred in the great
commercial paroxysm of 1857-8, and of the phenomena which
attended the religious awakening that followed over land and sea,
bursting out like prairie-fires in different parts of the country
at the same time, and without any visible communication, just
as it is now in Ireland, Scotland, and over a part of Northern
Europe, to show how different characters and temperaments
are differently affected by the very same events and circumstances,
and how they are brought to different conclusions by
the very same evidence, I have undertaken to set forth what
True Womanhood is equal to, and capable of, under some of
the most trying circumstances of life.
J. N.
Portland, Me., August 25, 1859.
