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Title: The Doctor's Daughter
Author: "Vera"
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6809]

[This file was first posted on January 27, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER ***

Produced by Yvonne Dailey, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
This file was produced from images generously made available
by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions.

Charles Dickens observes with much truth, that "though seldom read,
prefaces are continually written." It may be asked and even wondered,
why? I cannot say that I know the exact reason, but it seems to me
that they may carry the same weight, in the literary world, that
certain _sotto voce_ explanations, which oftentimes accompany the
introduction of one person to another, do in the social world.

If it is permitted, in bringing some quaint, old-fashioned little
body, before a gathering of your more fastidious friends, at once to
reconcile them to his or her strange, ungainly mien, and to justify
yourself for acknowledging an intimacy with so eccentric a creature,
by following up the prosy and unsuggestive: "Mr. B----, ladies and
gentlemen," or "Miss M----, ladies and gentlemen," with such a
refreshing paraphrase as, "brother-in-law of the celebrated Lord
Marmaduke Pulsifer," or, "confidential companion, to the wife of the
late distinguished Christopher Quill the American Poet"--why should
not a like privilege be extended the labour-worn author, when he
ushers the crude and unattractive offspring of his own undaunted
energy into the arena of literary life?

Mr. B----, without the whispered guarantee of his relative importance,
would never be noticed unless to be riled or ridiculed; and so with
many a meek and modest volume, whose key-note has never been sounded,
or if sounded has never been heard.

We would all be perfect in our attributes if we could! Who would write
vapid, savourless pages, if it were in his power to set them aglow
with rare erudition, and dazzling conceptions of ethical and other
abstract subjects? If I had been born a Dickens, _lector benevole_, I
would have willingly, eagerly, proudly, favoured you with a "Tale of
Two Cities" or a "David Copperfield;" of that you may be morally
certain, however, it is no mock self-disparagement (!) that moves me
to humbly acknowledge (!) my inferiority to this immortal mind. I have
availed myself of the only alternative left, when I recognized the
impossibility of rivalling this protagonist among the _dramatis
personae_ of the great Drama of English Fiction, and have done
something of which he speaks very tenderly and delicately somewhere in
his prolific writings, one's "best." He says, "one man's best is as
good as another man's," not in its results, (I know by experience),
but in the abstract relationship which exists between the nature of
the two efforts, and I am grateful to him for having thus provided
against the possible discouragement of "small authorship."

In the subjoining pages, I offer to the world, a pretenseless record of the impressions, opinions, and convictions which have been, I may say, thrust upon me by a contact, which is yet necessarily limited, with the phases of every-day life.

That some of these reflections and conclusions should not meet with
universal sympathy or approval, is not at all to be wondered at, when
we consider how much more different, than alike, are any two human
lives and lots. I do not ask my readers to subscribe to those tenets
and opinions which may seem unreal and exaggerated to them, because of

their different experience; I can only justify them in myself, by
declaring them to be the outgrowth of my own personal speculations in
the market of commonplace existence.

It has been my pleasure to probe under the surface of sorrow and song
that makes the swelling, restless tide of human passions a strange and
tempting mystery, even to itself; and though my pen may have failed to
carry out the deep-rooted ambition of my soul, there is some comfort
in the thought that I have made an effort; I have tried my young
wings, with the hope of soaring upward: if they are yet too feeble to
bear me, I am no more than the young eagle, and must rise again from
my fall, to await a gathering confidence and strength that may, or may
not, be in store for me.

A little mouse presumed to be the deliverer of a mighty lion, when
this noble beast lay ensnared and entangled in a net; it was slow and
tiresome work for the tiny benefactor to nibble now here, now there,
wherever its small teeth could find a vulnerable or yielding spot: but
a determination and decision of purpose, coupled with an undaunted and
fearless perseverance, have given issue time and again to achievements
even greater, though still less promising, than the undertaking of the
little mouse in the fable, but for those who can yet take heart, in
the face of possible failure, I think half the battle is won.

In introducing a second effort to the public, I feel called upon to
avail myself of the opportunity it affords me, of thanking many
readers for the kindness and consideration extended to my first. It
was kind of them to have dwelt at length upon its few redeeming
traits, and to have touched lightly and gently upon the cruder and
more faulty ones; it was kind of them to have taken into account every
circumstance which had any bearing upon the nature of the work: to
have alluded to the youth and inexperience of the writer. It was kind,
even of those who took it upon themselves to aver, not in the hearing
of the authoress herself, but elsewhere, that the composition was far
from being original. This latter verdict would have been the highest
tribute of all to the talent and erudition of the authoress, had they
who uttered it been capable or responsible judges of literary merit.
Being of that class, instead, who feel it urgent upon them to say
something, however garrulous or silly, when a local topic agitates
their immediate sphere, the authoress has not much reason for hoping
that their intention was really to flatter her maiden effort, by
purposely mistaking it for the work of an older, and abler hero of the
quill; however, if it might have been worthy of a maturer mind and
more powerful pen, in their eyes, a high compliment is necessarily
insinuated, even there, for the humble writer.

If the present story can lighten the burden of an idle hour of
sickness or sorrow; if it may shorten the time of waiting, or distract
the monotony of travel; if it may strike a key-note of common sympathy
between its author and its reader, where the shallow side of nature is
regretfully touched upon; if it may attract the potent attention of
even one of those whose words and actions regulate the tone and tenor
of our social life, to the urgency of encouraging, promoting and
favouring the principles of an active Christian morality, whose beauty
lies, not in the depths or vastness of its abstract conceptions, but
in its earnest, humble, and tireless labours for the advancement of
men's spiritual and temporal welfare--if it may do any one of these
things, it shall have more than realized the fond and fervent wish of