Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/12



apology for a book implies that the public are obliged to read it; an obligation that would reverse the order of nature—transfer the power from the strong to the weak. But, unfortunately for them, there is a portion of the public who are, in a certain sense, obliged to read a book—the kind friends of the author—and among these—I say it gratefully, not boastfully—I have the happiness to number many of my countrymen personally unknown to me. Of my friends, then, I ask indulgence for the following pages. They are published rather with deference to the wishes of others than from any false estimate of their worth. Our tour was made under circumstances which forbade any divergence from the highway of all the travelling world, and, consequently, we passed over a field so thoroughly reaped that not an ear, scarcely a kernel, remains for the gleaner. In addition to this, and to painful anxieties and responsibilities that accompanied us at every step, we were followed by intelligence of deep domestic calamity. On this subject I need not enlarge; the