OR,

VOICES OF THOUGHT AND COUNSEL,

FOR

THE WOODS AND WAYSIDE.

BY

W. GILMORE SIMMS, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF "KATHARINE WALTON," ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:

PUBLISHED BY E. H. BUTLER & CO.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of

Pennsylvania.

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952 5592 ege

THE collection which follows has been the unpremeditated accumulation of many years. It constitutes a body of sentiment and opinion, which, I trust, will commend itself to other minds, and be justified in the thought, feeling, and experience of other lives. Some of it may have been derived from a very excursive reading; indeed, it is scarcely possible that it should be otherwise: but I feel very sure that the greater portion of it has grown out of a purely individual experience, from patient as well as passing observation, and forms the conviction of a mind, the habits and training of which have been of a kind always to nourish a proper independence. Some of the opinions here expressed may startle : there is no good reason, however, that they should offend. You and I, gentle reader, may differ in

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many of our notions; but if we do not differ, how shall we expect to satisfy either mind, and by what process should we discover truth? Let our differences be of the sort only which music justifies and requires, in which a certain amount of discord is admitted as one of the most necessary ingredients of harmony.

W. G. S.