Page:Letters of Life.djvu/354

342

24 "Letters to Mothers."

This is a communication on matters that seemed to me of high import with those to whom Heaven has committed the moulding of the whole mass of mind in its first formation. It was written more con amore than most of my previous works. The importance of early training was continually unfolded and enforced by conducting at home the education of my own two children; and its voice often arose from my very heart of hearts. The first edition I printed myself, that I might have the privilege of distributing a larger number gratuitously. It was afterwards stereotyped, in three hundred and ninety-seven pages, by the Brothers Harper, and has been in successful circulation for a quarter of a century. One of its reviewers has pronounced it "a mass of excellence, with as little alloy as any book extant;" though, to chastise the vanity, if any should spring from such high praise, I have felt that it has never excited, in the class whom it addresses, the warm enthusiasm with which it was written. Some of its precepts may probably be deemed out of fashion by the mothers of the present generation.

25 "The Girl's Reading Book."

I was persuaded by a gentleman who was engaged in elevating the condition of Common Schools in the