However much the author of "Watch and Wait" may sympathize with that portion of the population of our country to which the principal characters of the story belong, he is forced to acknowledge that his book was not written in the interests of the anti-slavery cause. His young friends require stirring incidents of him, and the inviting field of adventure presented by the topic he has chosen was the moving spring which brought the work into existence; and if the story shall kindle any new emotion of sympathy for the oppressed and enslaved, it will have more than answered the purpose for which it was intended, and the writer will be all the more thankful for this happy influence.

As a story of exciting adventure, the writer hopes it will satisfy all his young readers; that they will love the gentle Lily, respect the manly independence of Dan, and smile at the oddities of Cyd; and that the book will confirm and increase their love of liberty and their hatred of tyranny. If the young fugitives were resolute, even to shedding the blood of the slave-hunter, they had forgiving and Christian hearts, in which there was neither malice nor revenge; and in this respect, if in no other, they are worthy exemplars for the young and the old.

With this explanation, I give the third volume of the Woodville Stories into the hands of my young friends, bespeaking for it the same favor which has been bestowed upon its predecessors.

WILLIAM T. ADAMS.

Dorchester, August 15, 1864.