Bertha's Christmas Vision

An Autumn Sheaf

(1856)

This is Horatio Alger's first published book.

DEDICATION: To my Mother.

As I turn over the pages of this my first book,
and mark here and there a name which use has
made familiar, I feel the more, that, but for your
sympathy and encouragement, much would still
remain unwritten. With me you have sorrowed
over the untimely death of “Little Charlie.”
“Bertha,” with her precious gifts,—whereof so
many stand in need,—has grown to you and
me not a child of fancy, but a living presence.
“Little Floy,” and the “Child of the Street,”
will recall, to your mind as to mine, the touching
lines of Mrs. Browning:—

“Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers!

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers;

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The young fawns are playing with the shadows;

The young flowers are blowing toward the West:

But the young, young children, O my brothers!

They are weeping bitterly,—

They are weeping in the play-time of the others,

In the country of the free.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see;

For the man’s grief abhorrent draws and presses

Down the cheeks of infancy.”

To you, then, I dedicate this book,—which is
partly yours, in spirit, if not in deed,—confident,
that, whatever may be its shortcomings in the
eyes of others, it will find a kindly welcome at
your hands.

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