The Knickerbocker Press, New York




PREFACE


This little book has been written under great physical disabilities,
chiefly while wandering about in search of health, and consequently far
from the libraries which would have enabled me to give proper references
to all my quotations. Often for a whole year I have been unable to touch
it; but again and again I have returned to my task, feeling it worth any
risk to mind or body if only in the end its words might prove of some
service to the educated mothers of England and America.

Under these circumstances, I know I may plead for indulgence as to any
defects its pages may present.

But now that, after six years, I have realized the pretty Eastern
proverb, "By patience and perseverance, and a bottle of sweet-oil, the
snail at length reaches Jerusalem,"--now that by God's unfailing help I
have finished my difficult task, I can but commit the book into the
hands of the women who have implanted in me, next to my faith in God,
faith in the "Power of Womanhood," and whose faithful adherence and
co-operation remain the deepest and most grateful memory of my life.
Most of the ordinary means of circulation are closed to a book of this
nature. The doors of circulating libraries are for the most part shut;
notices in papers for the general public are necessarily few; nor can I
any longer hope, as I once did, to visit America, and give it a wide