BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1890

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

PREFACE.

If there is any excuse for this publication, it must be found in the fact that I was associated with Mr. Bryant for many years in the management of "The Evening Post" newspaper, my connection with it commencing at about the same period of life as his; in the fact that we there contracted personal relations which he was pleased late in life to crown by naming me one of the executors of his will; and finally in the hope I entertain that a compendious and comparatively inexpensive sketch of his instructive career may reach a class, not inconsiderable in numbers, who have neither the leisure nor opportunities for perusing the elaborate and scholarly biography by Mr. Godwin.

Whatever may be the imperfections of this work, and no one is likely to be more sensible of them than I am,- I permit myself to indulge the hope that in quarters where the nature and importance of Bryant's life-work are little known

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or imperfectly appreciated, it may assist to awaken a curiosity which will not be satisfied until the name of Bryant has become a household word, and his example the very lowest standard of public and private morals in any American family. THE SQUIRRELS, February 3, 1890.