the value of this little book. I have no other assistance of any kind to acknowledge. * Will it be thought unfeminine or obtrusive, if I add yet a few words? I think it due to truth and to myself to seize this opportunity of saying, that a little book published three years ago, and now perhaps forgotten, was not written for publication, nor would ever have been printed but for accidental circumstances. That the title under which it appeared was not given by the writer, but the publisher, who at the time knew nothing of the author. And that several false dates, and unimportant circumstances and characters were interpolated, to conceal, if possible, the real purport and origin of the work. Thus the intention was not to create an illusion, by giving to fiction the appearance of truth, but, in fact, to give to truth the air of fiction. I was not then prepared for all that a woman must meet and endure, who once suffers herself to |