TO
JUDGE T. D. WALLACE
AND
MRS. OLIVE WALLACE.
My Dear Father and Mother:
No word, no act, no consecrated gift of mine, how great or slight soever it may be, can ever repay the beneficence and love of you to whom I owe life and whatever of prosperity has been granted me.
As my eyes glance in retrospect along the fading perspective of years and lose themselves in the dim days of the cradle, and thence to the present look forwards to the distant peaks of hope that rise above unknown mists and shadows and horizons, I hear the counseling words of a father, and feel the ever-present touch of a mother’s hand, as both guide me with love into the dim unknown of life. Though I pass onwards with a father’s “God-speed,” and a mother’s lingering embrace and loving kiss, and leave you both fondly looking after me, still your presence in my memory is ever a guiding reality that even now directs this good right hand of mine to inscribe these dedicatory words of filial affection.
If in the days agone I ever seemed unheeding of that counsel of a father, and unmindful of that dearest love of a cherished and cherishing mother, I can but say thatboth that counsel and that love reach through those moulding and shaping years of my life and take hold on my heart with a firmness and a gentleness that nothing else of all the years can boast.
It is but right and just, therefore, that in these your later days I should likewise be your guide and your stay in so far as my hand may let;—that I should reach out my strong young arm and steady the tottering years that throng around you.
Withal, if I can afford you even one slight pleasure, it is my heart’s desire so to do. It is, therefore, with somewhat more than filial love that I dedicate this little volume to you, my Father and my Mother, both together my counselor and guide, still mercifully spared to your children; and in doing so, I can but express the hope that your years may yet be many and happy; that the iris struck by a New Sun from the crystals of the whitened and whitening wintry years may be as full of beauty and joy as were the early spring blossoms of love and hope that you pressed to your bosoms in youth.
Your Son,
CHARLES.