Page:The Story of the Cheeryble Grants.djvu/21

 ## Preface ##

The publication of “The Country and Church of the Cheeryble Brothers” at Christmas, 1893, elicited letters of much interest relative to the brothers Grant, from many quarters, and, in some important cases, from beyond the seas.

These communications opened sources of information not previously available, and have rendered practicable a presentation of the remarkable life-story of the Grants, not hitherto attainable.

One striking coincidence of the correspondence is worthy of note. About three months after the publication of the “Cheeryble” volume, two letters were, at the same moment, put into my hand. The first was from a widow approaching three-score-and-ten, who, in her early years, had been lady’s maid to a grandniece of the Cheerybles at Springside. A somewhat hard but heroic lot had been hers through a long widowhood; and, having seen a notice of the “Cheeryble” book, she was anxious to know if the mistress of her early days was still alive. Unfortunately, my information of the lady referred to dated back forty or fifty years, and the letter was laid down with something like a pang of regret. The second, which had a foreign