DEDICATION.
To my Mother.
As I turn over the pages of this my first book, and mark here and there a name which use has made familiar, I feel the more, that, but for your sympathy and encouragement, much would still remain unwritten. With me you have sorrowed over the untimely death of “Little Charlie.” “Bertha,” with her precious gifts,—whereof so many stand in need,—has grown to you and me not a child of fancy, but a living presence. “Little Floy,” and the “Child of the Street,” will recall, to your mind as to mine, the touching lines of Mrs. Browning:—
“Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers!
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers;
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;