Page:A La California.djvu/14

 remodeled, had Col. Evans' life been spared. Still his friends have not thought it advisable to attempt to revise or change it for better or worse. It goes to the press and the reading public just as his own hand left it—a literary orphan.

To those who may have to deal with it in the way of book notices, may be suggested the propriety of distinguishing between what are or might have been remediable faults, and those which are inherent in the nature of the undertaking.

To the public of our own city and State it commends itself as a work of strong local interest, embodying, in a permanent and attractive form, much that otherwise would have early perished from sight and memory; as the production of one of our own citizens; as the resource of an interesting family, which has been doubly bereaved in the sudden death of husband and father; and it appeals forcibly to that sentiment of generous sympathy for the living and regret for the dead, which is so singularly characteristic of Californian social life. WM. H. L. BARNES. 1873.