The Mountain Wild Flower

females of our country in shaping the character and destiny of our population.

The Author concludes this short Preface with the touching remark of Johnson in the last number of the Rambler :—"I shall never envy the honors which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I may be numbered among the writers who have given ardor to virtue and confidence to truth."

Consecrating this humble offering at the foot of the Cross, he bends his eye up to the "Mercy seat," and invokes the blessing of the Spirit in the words of the Great Poet,

"Gentle breath of yours, my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails."

West Stockbridge, Mass.

June 1, 1838.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Description of Mary's native valley; her birth; obscure pa-
rentage; delicate constitution; beauty of person and strength
of mind; her home, its quiet and social circle; death of her
father; her family dispersed; Mary is left more than an
orphan.

CHAP. II.

Page 1

The friendliness of a happy and permanent home to the deve-
lopment of all the best feelings of the heart and faculties of
the mind; Mary without a home; her early and extreme
privations; early taste for reading; domestic trials; her
pastor's visit in her 10th year; his astonishment on finding
such a mind in such a sphere; his influence in shaping her
destiny; Mary a sabbath school scholar; signal examples
of piety found in obscure life.

CHAP. III.

The brilliancy of her religious experience atones for the dark-

ness of her lot; anecdote; her early conversion; habit of

secret prayer in her 6th year; reasons why she cherished no

hope; philosophy of conversion and grace in the heart;

Mary always a sufferer, an attendant of a sick mother for

years; reads by moonlight to save expense and alleviate the

keenness of poverty.

CHAP. IV.

She writes a vast deal; always destroyed her writings;
wrote on scrap paper; too poor to get better; circumstances
under which she wrote; her genius still brilliant in adversi-
ty; unable to get books; a letter she wrote in her 11th year;
its characteristics; Mary contrasted with Lucretia Maria
Davidson.

CHAP. V.

Page 31

The influence of mountain scenery upon her whole character;
the Bible and the Holy Spirit, mingling with the harmonies
of nature, produce a wonderful development of her mental and
moral powers; a letter written in her 12th year.

CHAP. VI.

Common misfortunes bind the sisters together; a brother's let-
ter; her's to a sister; character of her writings.

CHAP. VII.

Philosophy of humility; its nature, exhibitions and fruits;

important distinction; her diary; extraordinary instance

of answer to her prayer.

CHAP. VIII.

Diary continued; beautiful thoughts of hers on the story of the

Prodigal Son; humility, the precursor of exaltation; the bril-

liancy of her experience after she emerged from the eclipse;

a letter.

CHAP. IX.