OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY; Gathered and Preserved IN THEIR BRIGHTNESS AND PURITY. BY SEBA SMITH. "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY J. K. WELLMAN, 118 Nassau Street. 1846 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by J. K. WELLMAN. In the Clerk's office of the District Court, for the Southern District of New York. S. W. BENEDICT, STER. & PRINT., 16 Spruce Street, New York. PREFACE. DEW-DROPS-and wherefore? The title to a book should in some degree at least be a sort of index to its character. In our present little offering, if the title is not an appropriate emblem of what the book is, it is certainly a true type of what we desired to make it. It was our desire that the brightness of the dew-drop should shine through our pages, while they should at the same time be marked with such plainness and simplicity, that he that runs may read. What is more pure than the drops of morning dew? So it has been our aim to gather into our little fountain nothing but sweet and pure waters; that while they spread over the moral " field of the world," they may "drop as the rain, and distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass," awakening the better sympathies of the heart, nourishing the germs of virtue, and presenting, in its bright mirror, "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever |