responses are never in any age or clime withheld from the devout questioner.

My great effort has been to make a thoroughly readable book. With this in view I have not given tedious extracts from dull plays and weary epics, but have gathered up the best of the old ballads and short, timeapproved poems, and drawn largely from contemporary writers and the waifs and estrays of unknown authors. I have also, as a specialty of the work, made a careful selection of the best hymns in our language. I am prepared to find my method open to criticism from some quarters, but I have catered not so much for the scholarly few as for the great mass of readers to whose "snatched leisure" my brief lyrical selections would seem to have a special adaptation.

It only remains for me to acknowledge the valuable suggestions and aid I have received from various sources during the preparation of this volume, and especially the essential assistance I have had from LUCY LARCOM of Beverly Farms, to whose services I have before been indebted in the compilation of "Child Life."

AMESBURY, 9th mo., 1875.

J. G. W.