PREFACE TO THE LETTERS.

IN the sad months following the great bereavement which threw its sombre shadow over a happy home, changing smiles and cheerful greetings to sorrowful tears, many of the letters written by my dear husband were gathered together for the perusal of family and friends. It was, however, after due consideration, deemed fitting and best to preserve them in a more enduring form: giving them a place in connection with the speeches and addresses, that those who honored and admired him as the patriot and statesman only, might, together with those who knew and loved him, read of those qualities of mind and heart, which rendered him so dear in the home which he gladdened with the sunshine of his presence; while they exhibit, perhaps even more vividly than his earnest, impressive oratory, how fervent, pure, and true was the love he bore his country.

Perhaps some who, in the mysterious vicissitudes of human life, have drifted far away from youthful scenes and associations, may find in these pages passages which will bring vividly before them one who always held them in affectionate remembrance, and who, though constantly acquiring new friends, ever cherished the same unwavering attachment for those of his early years.

The Orchard home, so replete with rural beauty and so congenial in his hours of retirement, has passed into other hands; the old, bright days there are now but a memory: yet in perusing these records, those who have been beneath its roof may recall pleasing memories of bygone scenes, and imagine themselves in the old, familiar scenes; to hear the river's murmuring near his library windows; to see the sun

light shimmering through the trees he so carefully nurtured; to watch with him the robin building her nest; to listen to that pleasant voice, until the happy hours passed in his congenial companionship seem almost to have come again, irradiating the dark cloud of sorrow with which painful reality has overshadowed those who loved him.

L. D.