A few years ago I met at a seashore resort in Massachusetts a cultured gentleman who held a high position in an educational institution in that State. He told me that his only child, Vera, was named from the heroine of "Near to Nature's Heart." He had read all of my brother's books, but particularly enjoyed this one. And while in California making a trip to some of the high mountain passes of the State I met a young couple living in a lonely canyon, miles from any town, whose year-old baby was called Amy, in honor, they said, of the heroine of "Nature's Serial Story." They had no knowledge of my relationship to the author of the book. "A Knight of the Nineteenth Century" (1877) was reverently dedicated to the memory of the writer's father. These lines form the preface:-- "He best deserves a knightly crest Who slays the evils that infest His soul within. If victor here, He soon will find a wider sphere. The world is cold to him who pleads; The world bows low to knightly deeds." Soon after this book was offered for sale upon the railroad trains, a young man, who had tired of the humdrum duties of his home, started West to seek adventure in the excitements of mining life. He bought a copy, read it, and was so impressed by the writer's picture of true knightly deeds that he abandoned his purpose and returned to take up the obligations he had cast aside. "A Face Illumined" (1878). A beautiful, but discordant, face once seen at a concert-garden suggested the title and plot of this book. It interested Edward to imagine what such a countenance could express under the ennobling influence of a pure Christian life. He says in his preface:--"The old garden and the aged man who grew young in it are not creations, but sacred memories." It was our father who was constantly in the writer's mind as he rehearsed the conversations with Mr. Eltinge, and the enormous silver poplar that shaded the old man's front gate, the tool-house and pear tree, and the brook in which "Ida Mayhew" bathed her tear-stained face, were all drawn from originals. "Without a Home" (1881). This book was announced two years before it was completed, for my brother studied with great care and patience the problems upon which it touches. He visited scores of tenements and station-houses, and sat day after day upon the bench with police judges. He also talked with many of the proprietors of city stores and with their employees, and his indignation was aroused when he found that in most of these establishments saleswomen were compelled to stand throughout the hot summer days, no provision being made for even an occasional rest. In regard to the victim of the opium habit in this story, he said once, "I felt from the first that Mr. Joselyn was going to ruin and I could not stop him, and suffered much with him. I also felt the death of his daughter almost as much as if she had been a member of my own family."