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 PREFACE.

Some men are daily dying; some die ere they have learned how to live; and some find their truest account in revealing the mysteries of both life and death,—even while they themselves perish in the act of revelation, as is most wonderfully done in the remarkable volume now before the reader,—as, alas! almost seems to be the case with the penman of what herein follows.

The criterion of the value of a man or woman is the kind and amount of good they do or have done. The standard whereby to judge a thinker, consists in the mental treasures which during life they heap up for the use and benefit of the age that is, and those which are to be, when the fitful fever of their own sorrowful lives shall be ended, and they have passed away to begin in stern reality their dealings with the dead. He or she who adds even one new thought to the age becomes that age's great benefactor, to whom in future times grateful men shall erect monuments and statues. Well, here follows the work of a man, for his hand penned