Page:The Prairie Flower; Or, Adventures In the Far West.djvu/13




 * —In selecting your name to grace this page, I feel I am only doing an act appropriate to the esteem in which I hold and the friendship that I feel for you. And to me this inscription seems the more appropriate, that our acquaintance was formed in the sick-room, and at the bedside of one near and dear to me, while I was engaged in writing the closing scenes of the pages which follow. My child, an only child, was lying at the point of death; and you were called, in your professional capacity, to visit him. The kindly interest you manifested in his welfare the close and almost constant attendance you gave him the high professional skill you displayed in his behalf and last, though not least, your success, under God, in snatching him, as it were, from the very jaws of death led me to admire your talents as a physician, and, together with one who had been, like myself, nearly prostrated with affliction, at the thought that our oily child must go from us, to regard you as truly a "friend in need." The friendship thus begun, and since continued, I trust will be lasting; and as a remembrancer of the many pleasant hours we have spent together, exchanging ideas and traveling over the bright and fertile fields of imagination, I humbly inscribe this work to you.

THE AUTHOR.