About ten years ago, when I was writing a short memoir of my father, it occurred to me that a companion volume of his letters might be published. I knew that many of these were preserved by his friends, and esteemed not only on account of regard for the writer, but for what was thought considerable originality. Yet I was not prepared for the extent of the collection which was most courteously placed at my disposal, carrying with it, by virtue of its very existence, the evidence of some merit. The publication of the volume was postponed; but the delay was by no means unfortunate, inasmuch as it gave me leisure to sift the material and reject that which was unsuitable, while applying myself, at the same time, to a closer and more unprejudiced study of my father's life.

There being an analogy between writing dashed off, for the most part, without the slightest thought of publicity, or of literary precision, and rapid sketches from nature done with a purpose and a will, I thought there would be as much danger in tampering in the one case as there always is in the other, and that it would be best to leave the selected letters to stand or fall on their own merits, without the manipulation such collections have sometimes received. Nevertheless I deemed it well to omit passages that were of no interest whatever except to my father's correspondents, the omissions being indicated in the usual way.