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PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1866.
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER II. THE WELCOME AT OVERLOOK-HOUSE 18
CHAPTER III. THE CHRISTMAS LOG IN THE KITCHEN 33
CHAPTER IV. HOW THE OVERLOOK PAPERS CAME TO BE WRITTEN 47
I. DR. BENSON; OR THE LIVING MAN EMBALMED FOR TWENTY YEARS 51
III. MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT BIOGRAPHY;--OR, LITERATURE FOR A FAIR WIDOW 91
IV. KATYDIDS:--A NEW CHAPTER IN NATURAL HISTORY 127
IX. WILD FLOWERS GATHERED FOR MY WIFE 178
XI. DR. SAMUEL STANHOPE SMITH AND THE HAUNTED HOUSE 198
MY DEAR FRIEND:--At last, as if borne to you by some scape-grace of a messenger, these papers, copied from the time-discoloured manuscripts, so carefully preserved in the old book-case, which with its dark lustre, its bright brass ornaments, is still the prominent object in our library, are destined to reach the hands into which they should long ago have been placed.
I well remember the evening on which you first heard of them, and listened to my attempt to read them to you; perplexed as I was with the faded lines, traced by fingers which can write no more.
You will not forget our drives, previously, during the day, and late in the afternoon, in consequence of my week-day service in the old church. Perhaps the ancient edifice would need the excuse of days of architectural ignorance, but no Cathedral on earth can surpass it, in its claim to occupy a place amid scenes of surpassing beauty and sublimity. There it stands alone, on the slope of an immense hill, with the whole range of the mountains from the water-gap to the wind-gap full in view--glorious walls to sustain the great blue dome of heaven! The great solitude of the road that winds along the grave-yard, has often caused me to think of distant friends, and has riveted them to my soul with still more indissoluble bonds. And the Great Friend has been the great relief from oppressive loneliness, as I thus stood in one of the beautiful gates of the Eternal Temple. As to that quiet grave-yard itself, the "rhetoric of the dead" is there well spoken, and they whose ashes are here deposited, do not find "second graves" in our short memories.