It seems a little strange that I, Abner Stone, now verging upon my
seventieth year, should bring pen, ink, and paper before me, with the
avowed purpose of setting down the love story of my life, which I had
thought locked fast in my heart forever. A thing very sacred to me; of
the world, it is true, yet still apart from it, the blessed memory of it
all has abode in my breast with the unfading distinctness of an old
picture done in oils, and has brightened the years I have thus far lived
on the shadowed slope of life. And now has come the firm belief that the
world may be made better by the telling of this story--as my life has
been made better by having lived it--and so I shall essay the brief and
simple task before my fingers have grown too stiff to hold the pen,
trusting that some printer of books will be good enough to put my story
into a little volume for all who would care to read. And I, as I pursue
the work which I have appointed unto myself, shall again stroll through
the meadows and forests of dear Kentucky, shall tread her dusty highways
under the spell of a bygone June, and shall sit within the portals of an
old home whose floors are now pressed by an alien foot. Now, ere I have
scarce begun, the recollections come upon me like a flood, and this page
becomes blurred to my failing sight. O Memory! Memory! and the visions
of thine!