PREFACE.
In a letter accompanying the manuscript of the following book were these paragraphs:
“Some years ago, while traveling in Southern France, I met with an accident that nearly ended my life. I was tenderly nursed to health in a family for which I formed the highest respect and a lasting friendship. Some years later I met the widow with her beautiful grown up children. One of the sons was devoted to science, the other to literature, and both becoming known in the world, while the daughter was engaged in landscape painting, ‘until,’ as she said with a most bewitching smile, ‘the right man comes along.’
“Talking of her husband, the widow said that he had left some manuscript which I might like to see. She then brought me a bundle neatly bound up in tape. Looking it over, I suggested its publication, and she gave it to me unreservedly to do with it as I thought best. I have not erased a line or altered a word. It is an autobiography of undeserved shame and sorrow, as well as an earnest effort of well doing. It is a pity that such a life should have been, and I trust that its lessons will be heeded by those who need them most.”
The word Eurasian is made of Eur, from Europe, and Asian, from Asia, and applied to the children of a European and an Asiatic and to their descendants, of whom there is a large class in India.