Oct., 1893.

Gift of

Rev. John D. Wells (57)

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by GOULD AND LINCOLN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

ROCKWELL & CHURCHILL,

Stereotypers and Printers, Boston.

PREFACE.

THE death of young children is one of the most common afflictions that befall the human family. According to a recent medical authority, twenty-two per cent. of our race die before they are one year old; thirty-seven per cent. before they are five years old; and nine-twentieths of the whole number born, die before reaching their fifteenth year.

But familiar as this form of bereavement is, the loss of a child in its early years is ordinarily one of the most sorrowful calamities that can overtake those whom God has permitted to enter into the parental relation. There is a peculiar poignancy in such a grief, as there certainly is a peculiar sadness in such a visitation of death. To see budding loveliness, with all its artless ways and its treasures of unfolded hopes, nipt in a night by the frosty touch of the destroyer to witness the death-agonies of helpless, confiding, mutely-appealing innocence, without the power of relief- to commit to the dust in its feeble infancy the child upon whose strong arm and loving heart you had hoped to lean in the days of your own weakness and decay- this is more than a sad reversal of the order of nature; it is, to the sensitive and affectionate heart, one of the sharpest pangs it is capable of enduring.

And yet it must be added that there are also many peculiar sources of consolation opened to those who