PREFACE.

THE authoress of this little story does not launch it upon the sea of literature, in the expectation that the wind and tide of public favour will set in to waft it far from the lone creek whence it was started; neither does she aspire to see it skirting the coast with gaily-rigged pleasure boats, attended by other music than that of the liquid-stringed harp they oversweep so lightly.

She knows well that this will neither go abroad a stately ship, nor glide near home a fairy pinnace; yet she sends it forth to its destination-the hearts of friends-with a message, a message which few perhaps will scorn. But, not to leave it wholly to the

mercy of the rough buffeting which may possibly overtake it on its course thither, she ventures on a few words of explanation; albeit apologies have, of late, gone out of fashion.

She fears that the precocity of thought and feeling displayed by her young hero and heroine may be deemed exaggerated. Unusual she allows it to be,

but not too highly-coloured, especially in cases parallel to that of Maurice Wetherill, where thought had been fostered in the retirement which physical weakness creates for itself; sharpened and stung into fervour and energy by suffering, and educated and intensified by communion with the "concrete wisdom" of all ages, as furnished him by the shelves of his father's library. Who can think of Jean Paul Richter, overpowered at three years of age with a sense of his own individuality, whispering, fearfully, within the unsounded depths of his baby-being, "I AM A ME" or of Felicia Hemans and Elizabeth Barrett Browning dipping their spirit-robes in streams of Helicon, and early in

the bright May morning of their youth bathing their faces for beauty in the Castalian dews, and then pronounce Maurice and Mabel impossibly enthusiastic and ideal? In real life such natures dwell apart. They believe the chords they strike to be divine harmonies, and are shocked to find that they do not blend with the other melodies around them, or that to their sweetness there is no response. But Fiction has its privileges, or ought to have; and in placing in conjunction Florence Dalgleish, Maurice, and Mabel, Imagination asserts her independence, and pleads for the freedom that is allowed to poet, painter, or ingenious wright of fairy tales.

If another word of apology may be permitted, surely it is this: Let no meek-hearted recipient of the message think on this wise: "It is well for them to plan largely and build loftily who have fine materials and ample space; for me, I have little capability, little leisure, little room."

Be comforted; take courage. The good Spirit of God is as much at home in lowly human shrines as in royal