nature to require a man to
depreciate that to which he honestly devoted all his energies. Perhaps
it never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive how much has
really been done by everybody.

And I do most earnestly and solemnly protest, as if it were my last word
in life, that I have said nothing whatever as regards my political work
and its results which was not seriously said at the time by many far
greater men than I, so that I believe I have not the least exaggerated in
any trifle, even unconsciously. Thus I can never forget the deep and
touching sympathy which Henry W. Longfellow expressed to me regarding my
efforts to advance Emancipation, and how, when some one present observed
that perhaps I would irritate the Non-Abolition Union men, the poet
declared emphatically, "But it is a great idea" or "a noble work." And
Lowell, Emerson, and George W. Curtis, Bayard Taylor, and many more,
spoke to the same effect. And what they said of me I may repeat for the
sake of History and of Truth.

The present work describes more than forty years of life in America, and
it is therefore the American reader who will be chiefly interested in it.
I should perhaps have mentioned what I reserved for special comment in
the future: that during more than ten years' residence in Europe I had
_one thing steadily in view all the time_, at which I worked hard, which
was to qualify myself to return to America and there introduce to the
public schools of Philadelphia the Industrial or Minor Arts as a branch
of education, in which I eventually succeeded, devoting to the work there
four years, applying myself so assiduously as to neglect both society and
amusements, and not obtaining, nor seeking for, pay or profit thereby in
any way, directly or indirectly. And if I have, as I have read, since
then "expatriated" myself, my whole absence has not been much longer than
was that of Washington Irving, and I trust to be able to prove that I
have "left my country for my country's good"--albeit in a somewhat better
sense than that which was implied by the poet.

And I may here incidentally mention, with all due modesty, that since the
foregoing paragraph came to me "in revise," I received from Count Angelo
di Grubernatis a letter, beginning with the remark that, in consequence
of my _gentile ed insistence premura_, or "amiable persistence, begun
four-years ago," he has at length carried out my idea and suggestion of
establishing a great