In sending forth these gleanings from the later compositions of my few leisure hours, I take the opportunity of thanking most sincerely those many friends who have so generously subscribed for the work. Not only has their kind appreciation caused me to realize that I am no longer a stranger in a strange land, but also, that I possess the whole-souled sympathy of not a few, in this the country of my adoption.
Many are the tender memories which unite me to the olden land: a land for ever hallowed as the quiet resting-place of the lovèd dead, and the once happy home of a love-encircled childhood. Still, I cannot but deplore the many evils existing therein; more especially that evil of a system which places the greater number at the mercy of the fewer—the debasing system of extensive landlordism; a system which may have suited in those former periods when kingdoms and positions were mainly dependent upon force of arms, but for which there can be no plausible apology in this progressive, and pretentiously humanizing age; and if any words of mine shall induce the tyrant-crushed and woe-oppressed of other climes to raise their eyes towards the setting sun, and to seek a home in this Canada,—this God-appointed haven, these words shall not have been penned in vain.