GLIMPSES OF FIFTY YEARS The Autobiography OF AN AMERICAN WOMAN BY FRANCES E. WILLARD. WRITTEN BY ORDER OF THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN INTRODUCTION BY HANNAH WHITALL SMITH. "Nothing makes life dreary but lack of motive." General Agents for United States, Canada, Australia, Sandwich Islands. We wish it distinctly understood that Miss Willard's responsibility for this book ended when she furnished her manuscript. She repeatedly requested that but one picture of herself be given. This, however, would leave her out of official groups where she is the central figure, and to preserve the unity of these, also as illustrative of altogether different phases of her life, we have arranged the pictures as we believed the interests of the book and the preference of the public warranted us in doing. It should also be stated that Miss Willard wrote twelve hundred pages that had to be cut down to seven hundred, and in so doing, scores of names, facts and allusions, all of which she was especially desirous to have in this book, had to be omitted. To this omission the author has kindly agreed, having written rapidly and without calculating for the space required by this overplus of manuscript. Chicago, Feb. 22, 1889. WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE PUBLICATION ASSOCIATION, PRESERVATION MASTER Dedicatory. THERE IS ONE "Face that duly as the sun, Rose up for me since life begun;" ONE ROYAL HEART THAT NEVER FAILED ME YET. TO MOTHER, AS A BIRTHDAY GIFT, ON JANUARY 3, 1889, THE EIGHTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF HER UNDAUNTED LIFE, I DEDICATE HER ELDEST DAUGHTER'S SELF-TOLD STORY. CHOU, under Satan's fierce control, 'Shall Heaven on thee its rest bestow? I know not, but I know a soul That might have fall'n as darkly low. "I judge thee not, what depths of ill As weak, but for the help of God. "Shalt thou with full day-lab'rers stand, With an infirmity like thine. "Shalt thou, who hadst with scoffers part, I know not, but I know a heart As flinty, but for tears and prayers. "Have mercy, O thou Crucified! For even while I name Thy name, I know a tongue that might have lied, Like Peter's, and am filled with shame." |