This little book has been written under great physical disabilities, chiefly while wandering about in search of health, and consequently far from the libraries which would have enabled me to give proper references to all my quotations.

Often for a whole year I have been unable to touch it; but again and again I have returned to my task, feeling it worth any risk to mind or body if only in the end its words might prove of some service to the educated mothers of England and America.
Under these circumstances, I know I may plead for indulgence as to any defects its pages may present.
But now that, after six years, I have realized the pretty Eastern proverb, "By patience and perseverance, and a bottle of sweet-oil, the snail at length reaches Jerusalem,"-- now that by God's unfailing help I have finished my difficult task, I can but commit the book into the hands of the women who have implanted in me, next to my faith in God, faith in the "Power of Womanhood," and whose faithful adherence and co-operation remain the deepest and most grateful memory of my life.
Most of the ordinary means of circulation are closed to a book of this nature.

The doors of circulating libraries are for the most part shut; notices in papers for the general public are necessarily few; nor can I any longer hope, as I once did, to visit America, and give it a wide circulation by my own efforts.

I can but stretch out my hands to my many dear unknown friends in America,--hands which have grown too weak to hold the sword or lift the banner in a cause for which I have laid down my all,--and ask any mother who may find help or strength in this book to help me in return by placing it in the hands of other mothers of boys she may know, especially,--I would plead,--young mothers.

Do not say they are too young to know.