Driftwood

Front matter

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Preface

It is said that prefaces are out of date; nevertheless*! am sufficiently old-fashioned to believe that a word of ex planation is often necessary to bring the reader and writer into sympathy with each other.

Heretofore I have confined my publications to poetry; but in this miscellaneous collection I have interspersed prose with recently written poerns, together with others not embraced in the former volumes. I have also gathered together the short stories and other literary remains of my daughter, Mrs. May Bedford-Eagan, and included them in this work. Had not death intervened she intended publishing these under the title here used — Driftings. In that event mine would have been called Miscellaneous Pencilings — a title under which I have contrib uted much to the press. I have chosen Driftwood and Driftings as being a more euphoneous combination than the other names would have been. Doubtless her work would have been more finished had she lived to revise it; but to me it is sacred as it is — I have made few changes.

In regard to "Maude Arnold" I would say that the char acters are not a creation of the brain alone. The father and daughter are real actors, though imagination has played a part sometimes in their surroundings. Its beauty, however, is not in the romance itself, but in the gradual unfolding of mind and character, together with the life-like blending of the religious, the skeptical and the philosophical train of thought as committed to her diary by the heroine. I do not think the original plan of the story was fulfilled — the abrupt termina tion was the result of circumstances, the writer marrying about a week after the last installment was sent to the press.

• It is a sad pleasure to have my name connected in this way with one so dear — with one whose life was an exponent of the religion she professed, and whose writings are an exponent of the life she lived.

DALLAS, TEXAS, Feb. 9, 1893. L. S. B.