Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters

TO MRS. HERBERT TOWNSHEND BOWEN.
My Dear Friend,
Independent of the personal feelings which urged the dedication of this unpretending volume to you, I know few to whom a story illustrative of a mother's solemn responsibilities, intense anxiety to fulfill them, and deep sense of the Influence of Home could, with more justice, be tendered. Simple as is the actual narrative, the sentiments it seeks to illustrate, are so associated with you—have been so strengthened from the happy hours of unrestrained intercourse I have enjoyed with you—that, though I ought, perhaps, to have waited until I could have offered a work of far superior merit to a mind like yours, I felt as if no story of mine could more completely belong to you. Will you, then, pardon the unintentional errors which I fear you, as an earnest Protestant, may discern, and accept this little work as a slight tribute of the warm affection and sincere esteem with which you have been so long regarded by
Your truly attached Friend,
GRACE AGUILAR.
The following story will, the author trusts, sufficiently illustrate its title to require but few words in the way of preface. She is only anxious to impress two facts on the minds of her readers. The one—that having been brought before the public principally as the author of Jewish works, and as an explainer of the Hebrew Faith, some Christian mothers might fear that the present Work has the same tendency, and hesitate to place it in the hands of their children. She, therefore, begs to assure them, that as a simple domestic story, the characters in which are all Christians, believing in and practicing that religion, all doctrinal points have been most carefully avoided, the author seeking only to illustrate the spirit of true piety, and the virtues always designated as the Christian virtues thence proceeding. Her sole aim, with regard to Religion, has been to incite a train of serious and loving thought toward God and man, especially toward those with whom He has linked us in the precious ties of parent and child, brother and sister, master and pupil.