The Life of Charles Loring Brace Chiefly Told in His Own Letters -
Preface

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Contributed by Tina Vickery tsvickery@adelphia.net
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The Life of Charles Loring Brace
Chiefly Told in His Own Letters
Edited by His Daughter
With Portraits
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1894
Copyright, 1894, by Charles Scribner's Sons

To My Mother

PREFACE

In the task upon which I reluctantly entered three years ago, of
editing my father's letters, it was from the beginning my aim to use
only such material as should add something to the story of his life,
and to let that story tell itself just as far as possible, through
these letters.  Yet, in presenting him as the founder of a great
organization such as the Children's Aid Society, it has not been found
possible to adhere rigidly to that original plan.  Friendly letters,
with their natural assumption of a close knowledge of the business and
principles of his life-work, or to do justice to the final results
attained.  Nor can they be expected to exhibit duly the turning-points
of his success; the forces he most relied on; where he found sympathy
and where apathy; the relative value he attached to educational,
religious, industrial, personal influences, --- in short, the personal
side of his great philanthropic work.  These things are revealed again
and again in his book, "The Dangerous Classed of New York," and in the
annual reports of the society, and it has been to detach from what is
there written in principles in which he believed and on which he
worked, and to present them at once as a consistent whole, that I have
gone beyond the field of mere editing.  In doing this, it has not been
my aim to write the history of the Children's Society, but to show
what moved it founder in this particular direction, and how richly
life expanded for him as he watched society become a great engine in
the forces of good to mankind.  Perhaps nothing could more simply
present the happiness which life brought to him, than a comparison of
the two portraits given in this volume, one of the grave, anxious man
of thirty, and the other of the man of sixty.

I have to thank the many friends, both at home and in England, who
have spared no pains to procure for me his letters to them, but in
their kindness has been rendered in so personal a sense to him, that I
hesitate to intrude, even with thanks, between him and them.  To Mr.
George S. Merriam and Mr. James K. Paulding, however, my own personal
thanks are owing for valuable advice in many matters, and assistance
without which this task could scarcely have been accomplished.

EMMA BRACE.

Ches-Knoll, Dobbs Ferry, October, 1894.