ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, STEREOTYPER, AND ELECTROTYPER, 48 & 50 Greene Street, New York. PREFACE. THE quick and cordial reception which greeted the author's "Letters to the Young," and his more recent series of essays entitled "Gold Foil," and the constant and substantial friendship which has been maintained by the public toward those productions, must stand as his apology for this third venture in a kindred field of effort. It should be -and probably is-unnecessary for the author to say that in this book, as in its predecessors, he has aimed to be neither brilliant nor profound. He has endeavored, simply, to treat in a familiar and attractive way a few of the more prominent questions which concern the life of every thoughtful man and woman. Indeed, he can hardly pretend to have done more than to organize, and put into form, the average thinking of those who read his books-to place before the people the sum of their own choicer judgments-and he neither expects nor wishes for these essays higher praise than that which accords to them the quality of common sense. SPRINGFIELD, MASS., |