INTRODUCTION.
Some years ago these writings appeared in the Independent, Atlantic Monthly, and The Tribune. My thanks are with the respective editors by whose courtesy they assume this altered shape. Several were published in a certain magazine which died young. I send cordial greeting to its chief, and shed a few drops of ink over the nameless one, loved of the gods. Fain would I believe no action of mine had power to hasten that early and untimely end. The hurrying march in which all must join, is so rapid, my first audience is quite out of hearing; my first inklings have faded from the memory of readers except the one, beloved of my soul, who asks why the old Pueblo papers have not been reprinted. Ah, what exquisite flattery!
And just here I kiss the fair hands unseen which send such gracious messages. Dropping flowers in my way, pansies for thoughts, rosemary for remembrance, has made them the whiter and sweeter forevermore.
The Montezuma myth is so interwoven with the past and future of the Indians that every allusion to their history and religion must of necessity contain the revered name. The repetition in the compositions now collected did not appear so glaringly when they were detached. My first impulse was to omit such passages, but second thought sends out the letters as when first offered to the public, with all their imperfections (a good many), on their head.
It would be affectation to make secret what every writer understands: (and what reader have I who is not a writer?) the pleasure with which I gather my scattered children under a permanent cover. Family resemblance is strong enough to identify them anywhere, but that is no reason why they should not appear in shape which the world will little heed nor long remember. They were written when the ancient Palace I have tried to describe, was the residence of the Governor of New Mexico; and, in turning the leaves after seven years, I am touched by the same feeling which then moved me to pipe my little songs. Again I feel the deep solitude of the mountains, taste the all pervading alkali dust, and hear the sand-storm beating like sleet against the window panes. The best reward they brought were friendly voices answering in the blue distance across the Sierras, and cheering me with thought that I had won the place of welcome visitor in happy homes my feet may never enter; that through the bitter winter my room was kept by warm firesides under the evening lamp—there where the treasured books lie from day to day, looking like Elia’s old familiar faces. Dear to the heart, beautiful and forever young, are the unseen friends whose presence becomes an abiding consciousness to the writer.
Crawfordsville, Indiana, March, 1888.