Original (English)

PREFACE It will be seen that this volume is really written by Sophia Hawthorne; whose letters from earliest girlhood are so expressed, and so profound in thought and loveliness, that some will of sterner quality than a daughter's must cast them aside. I have tried to weed out those written records of hers (even from 1820) reaching to her last year in 1871, that could give no especial pleasure to any descendant who might come upon them; and I have been astonished to find that there was