The "Farm Ballads" have met with so kind and general a reception as to encourage the publishing of a companion volume.
In this book, also, the author has aimed to give expression to the truth, that with every person, even if humble or debased, there may be some good, worth lifting up and saving; that in each human being, though revered and seemingly immaculate, are some faults which deserve pointing out and correcting; and that all circumstances of life, however trivial they appear, may possess those alternations of the comic and pathetic, the good and bad, the joyful and sorrowful, upon which walk the days and nights, the summers and winters, the lives and deaths, of this strange world.
He would take this occasion to give a word of thanks to those who have staid with him through evil and good report; who have overlooked his literary faults for the sake of the truths he was struggling to tell; and who have believed—what he knows—that he is honest.
With these few words of introduction, the author launches this second
bark upon the sea of popular opinion; grinds his axe, and enters once
more the great forest of Human Nature, for timber to go on with his boat-building.
W.C.