Now that I have finished these Reminiscences and Records of my father, and closed my portfolio containing letters from him, memoranda, and documents, which I have been collecting for twenty years, I feel a pang as though the parting from him was new and fresh. While writing, I have, with the eyes of my mind, seen his tall form before me, and his mild blue eyes gazing into mine. I have felt the influence of his kind, loving, forgiving heart, guiding my pen. Many and many a sentence have I erased, because on reading it over, I have felt, "this he would not approve."

No reader can be more sensible of the imperfections of this sketch than the writer herself has been. I am well aware that there are others upon whom the pleasant task would have more appropriately fallen, though I have been cheered and sustained in my work, by words and letters of encouragement from kindred and friends. I have been drawn to the loving employment by a power I could not resist; by a feeling that though my father exercised love, patience, forgiveness towards all his children, toward none was there such need of these virtues as toward me.

In describing the characteristics of my father, especially in his social relations, I have chosen to illustrate his love, his patience, his tenderness, his foregiveness, by the incidents in his life, rather than to express them in the usual didactic form, even at the risk of putting myself in too prominent a position.

Of my readers, I ask that, overlooking all shortcomings in the preparation of my work, they will read candidly these Reminiscences and Records of a good man, now in a world where neither praise nor blame can injure him. If any one, after reading it, finds his own heart more full of love to his fellow-men, more tender towards their failings, more careful of their reputation, more like their divine Master in the exercise of every Christian virtue, then shall I be happy indeed.

H.N.W.B.