emphatically to repeat, that they are entirely of my own invention.

After the severe bereavement mentioned above, I still persevered in
my favourite study, and learned more from my own children than I did
before, having to act in the double capacity of father and mother. I
am well aware of the loss my children sustained by the above calamity.
In the matter of training, nothing can replace a good mother,--and
such indeed she eminently was! I felt the heavy stroke more severely,
and my children did also; but I consoled myself with the reflection,
that my loss was her gain, and that she had lived to witness fruits of
her unparalleled labours, to the thorough abandonment of self, and the
glory of her Maker. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these
little ones, ye have done it unto me." Night and day, when I had time
to think, such promises as these cheered and sustained me in doing
what I could for my own motherless children, and more and more
cemented my affections on the children of others, and, finally,
enabled me to mature my plans, and gave me strength and courage to
carry them out, first in the villages and places near London, and,
ultimately, single-handed and alone, through more than a quarter of
a century, in many of the chief cities, towns, and villages of the
United Kingdom. Simply to state this fact is all that is requisite
here to answer my present purpose, and to enlarge more upon it is
needless, as a full detail of the whole career is given in my "Early
Discipline Illustrated; or, the Infant System Progressing and
Successful," third edition, published in 1840, and to which much
more would require adding to bring it down to the present time, if a
further edition should be called for.

That prejudice should assail me, and objections be started as I came
more out into the world, was to be expected. I knew my own intentions,