Chapter I: Preface: To the American Edition

I have been requested by the publisher to introduce this little volume to the notice of American readers. “THE 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