PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. HAVE been requested by the publisher PEARL OF DAYS; The Advantages of the Sabbath to the Working Classes. By a Labourer's Daughter." How much is expressed in such a title-page! Does the book realize the hopes which at once suggest themselves to the intelligent and benevolent mind? To do this, the book should indicate on the part of the author a degree of cultivation not usual in her sphere of life, and attest this cultivation as the fruit of proper Sabbath observance. And such cannot fail to be the results to which every reader will arrive. These pages will reveal a mind of singular discipline and acuteness, of large observation and much philosophical power,-a heart imbued with sentiments of devout and cheerful piety, contented with its lot on earth, and looking for its better inheritance in heaven;-and all these in necessary connection with a domestic training, in which a labouring man's cottage illustrates the true idea of the Christian Sabbath. I commend the "Pearl of Days" to readers of every class, but particularly I commend it I. TO PARENTS. To them its Sketch of the Author's Life will exhibit hints and illustrations pertaining to domestic discipline and happiness, such as convince by their wisdom, and win by their beauty, such as adapt themselves equally to the homes of princes and peasants, and indicate the true methods of training children for any grade of life in which their lot may be cast. II. TO THE FRIENDS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS. The evils of society have awakened the sympathy of the benevolent. The best methods of removing them, especially of removing such as oppress the working classes, are subjects which everywhere task the thoughts of the wise and good. Let all such sit at the feet of the Labourer's Daughter. She has received wisdom at the feet of Christ. She teaches the true social regeneration. Phi losophers, economists, statesmen, can develop no theories of progress so certainly promising and assuring virtue, order, industry, plenty, concord, happiness. In This ques III. To THE WORKING CLASSES THEMSELVES. America, more than in any other land on earth, the working classes may work out for themselves an honourable destiny. To a wide extent, these classes are conscious of their opportunities. Many a mother in the hut of poverty presses her child to her heart, and anticipates for him a sphere of life higher than her own. How shall she place his feet in the path which leads to it? tion starts in her thoughts a thousand times. Here she may solve it. Asking a higher destiny, the working classes cry, "Who will show us any good?" And responses come back to them in numberless forms,- -one telling them that their rise in the social scale is to be secured by the triumph of a political party, or by the success of certain measures of public policy,-another bidding them seek relief in "Unions" for the regulation of the wages of labour, and for mutual protection against the oppressions of employers-and another declaring that their depression is the fruit of a false social organization, and will find its remedy in the schemes of "Association." But these are not responses of wisdom and truth. The labouring classes must work out their own rise, through their own intelligence and virtue. Intelligent and virtuous, they will command respect; they will be neither the dupes of the designing, nor the slaves of the tyrannical. On these points they will find this little volume, from one of their own class, full of counsels gathered from the source of all truth. Let them ponder thoughtfully its pages. I need not explain the occasion of the publication of this Essay in England. That is sufficiently explained in the Introduction which follows. It has had a large circulation in that country, under the patronage of the great and good, and dedicated, by her own cheerful permission, to the excellent woman who sits upon the British throne, and exalts her lofty position by her exemplary piety, I cannot doubt that the Essay will be equally acceptable on this side of the water, and as fruitful in beneficent influences. New York, Nov. 15 1848. INTRODUCTION. HE circumstances out of which the following Essay, with its accompanying Sketch of the Author's Life, originated, are as remarkable as they are deeply interesting and hopeful. Jealous for the honour of God's Sabbath, which men of the world were periling-jealous for the privileges to man conferred by the Sabbathjealous for the labouring man, whose feelings respecting the Sabbath were often misrepresented to his disadvantage, a layman resolved to afford an opportunity for the working classes to speak their own mind freely on the matter, and to |