Excerpt from Looking Back From the Sunset Land: Or People Worth Knowing
Horace greeley said that no man should die without planting a tree or writing a book. I have planted many a tree and I have written much in various forms; why should I not write a book also? The only apology I feel like making is that it has in it so much about myself. But if I had not written it the book would never have been written. If any apology is due to the reading public for the issue of such a volume at all, I have more than one. I owe it to others as well as myself to explain or account for several occurrences in my life as known to the church - events that were not understood then and that yet remain unaccounted for. And then I desire to leave on record a narrative of events that otherwise would be unknown to my survivors, and to leave behind me a testimony in behalf of truths which, however much neglected or despised, are the very truths of God. In no other way can I now be of use to my children and theirs some of whom would know nothing of events recorded herein unless told to them by the writer.
It is due to the reader to know that this volume was written when life’s shadows were lengthening out rapidly. The first manuscripts were sketched hastily with the pencil on Chinese paper during the winter of 1896 and ‘97 when the writer was in his 77th year and in feeble health. Well did he know that the sands of life were running nearly out. As the time was short no days nor even hours could be lost; and hence the entire work was done in haste as well as in the midst of many other labors all the time pressing their claims. The writer hopes therefore that the literary reader will be lenient in his criticisms of the book. It was written not so much to please the lovers of literature as to benefit the friends of truth who will survive the writer.
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