University of Virginia Library

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TO THE READER.

The Author of the following pieces has not come before the public with the thought of acquiring any very extended or permanent reputation as a writer of Poetry. But as most of these verses have appeared only in the short-lived pages of the newspapers, and as some of them have been pretty widely copied with expressions of approval, he has not thought it presumptuous in him to put them in a more durable form, and present them to the Public as they now appear.