Yet there is another consideration which ought to reconcile me to coming forward in a way so contrary to what I had ever contemplated. I think the story of my quiet life may lead others to reflect more seriously on the griefs, the trials, and the hardships to which so many of my sex are constantly subjected. It may lead some of the other sex either to think more of these trials, or to view them in a new and different light from any in which they have heretofore regarded them. They may even think that I have suggested a new remedy for an old evil. I know that many such have labored to remove the wrongs of which poor and friendless women are the victims. But while they have already done much toward that humane end, as much remains to do. I make no studied effort to influence or direct them. The contrast between my first and last experience was so great, that, in rewriting, I added some facts from the experience of others to give force to the recital of my own. My hope is, that humane minds may be gratified by a narrative so uneventful, and that they, fortified by position and means, will be led to do for others, in a new direction, as much as I, comparatively unaided, have been able to do for myself. CHAPTER I. Having always had a great fondness for reading, I have gone through every book to which my very limited circle of acquaintance gave me access. Even this small literary experience was sufficient to impress upon my mind the superior value of personal memoirs. Of all my reading, they most interested me; and I have learned from others that such books have most interested them. Indeed, biography, and personal narrative of all kinds, seem to command a general popularity. Moreover, we like to know from the person himself what he does, how he thinks and feels, what fortunes or vicissitudes he encounters, how he begins his career, and how it ends. All biography gives us most of these particulars, but they are never so vividly recited as by the subject of the narrative himself. Accordingly what was once a kind of diary of the most unimportant events I have transformed into a personal history. I know the transformation will not give them any importance they did not originally possess, but it gives me at least one chance of making my recital interesting.