  IT is only a few brief lines, and I must say good-bye to the reader, and the book closes. You and I have kept company together through nearly three years of pleasant intercourse—a brief time as numbered by years, but long enough in the calendar of words and deeds. I trust neither of us is the worse for the company, and that we shall part with kindly words, good wishes and mutual blessings, until we see each other again. I trust that in these preceding pages, each one of you may have found some thought you will deem worthy to lay away for preservation among the locks of hair and old letters and faded flowers and other souvenirs which each of you keep and look at when the world presses heavily upon you with its cares and anxieties. I trust that you may have found something that is beautiful in the lives of each one of our little family with whom you have been made acquainted, in your companionship with me. I frankly confess to you that I have a tender regard for them all, and that I shall be disappointed if you do not share the same, as I have only been their mouthpiece when they have spoken. I know that they regret the parting with you as much as I, and that if we ever meet again, they will extend to you the same warm welcome as I. And now the book closes, just as the birds are flying to the warmer South and the groves are growing strangely silent; just as the flowers are fading in the gardens and in the fields; just as the leaves are falling in the forests, and the hill-sides are beginning to drape themselves in the melancholy and tender beauty of the Autumn. I cannot make this parting without a feeling of regret and a certain sadness; and, as I extend my hand to each and all of you—to some whom I have met daily, to some whose faces have grown familiar, and to some whom I have never seen and may never see, and yet have sent me precious words of sympathy and encouragement during these past three years—I should be ungrateful were I not to acknowledge the constant kindness which has greeted these careless letters as they have appeared in the columns of the Tribune. Hoping that, in some future time, we may meet together again as now, it only remains to say Farewell, and to write those saddest of all words— THE END.
FOOTNOTES: Transcriber's Notes: Obvious typographical errors were repaired. Archaic or variant stylistic spellings, and hyphenation inconsistencies, were retained. Redundant title page at the beginning—displaying only "Letters of Peregrine Pickle"—was removed. |
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