FOREWORD
This book does not in any sense purport to be a biography. Often during Father's lifetime, on our long walks together or during long quiet evenings at home, he would tell of his early life, repeating over and over certain incidents which had impressed him deeply and so—when after he had gone we found among his papers two closely written diaries bound in calf, telling of his trip to California and the return from there—it seemed most natural to work over these diaries, to try to make out their closely penciled pages and, when that was done, with as few changes as possible, to publish these, together with a brief sketch of his early life and a few explanatory notes, for his family, friends, and any others who may be interested in these early experiences of one who came seeking the best in this country.
The construction has been left unchanged and is very suggestive of the German, while the use of words, if at times inaccurate and somewhat flowery, is remarkable when one considers that but three years before he had come to this country an immigrant boy, knowing no English whatever. He was constantly reading, both books and the daily papers (has spoken often of how, later on, he took the New York Tribune to study the editorials by Horace Greeley), and then trying to use the new words which he found—doubtless keeping his diary partly for that purpose. On the whole it would seem that he has succeeded in making his thoughts remarkably clear. Some of these are very characteristic of him as we knew him in later years—but in religious matters he had reacted from the despotism of a strong established church and of a narrow-minded bigotry without as yet knowing the deep personal religious experience which was afterwards his. As to his political views—it is hard to believe that they were written in 1852 when they might equally well have been expressed at any time since 1914.
Belle Willson Lobenstine