Excerpt from The Journal of Horticulture, Cottage Gardener, and Country Gentlemen, Vol. 3: A Journal of Horticulture, Rural and Domestic Economy, Botany and Natural History
We know of one who would not have on the parlour chimney-shelf a dial with a seconds hand, because it made him see and feel how life lessens, as it were, drop by drop. What he would have said, or how he would have felt, if he had to write these Prefaces surpasses our power of surmise, for they at once tell of six months gone-and how quickly gone!
Grateful are we to record that truth, for miserable is he over whom time passes on heavily. But no such weight has been upon us: no day has been long enough or slow enough each days evening seemed to arrive before its morning had passed into noontide.
This was not because there were no sorrows around us: for we have had by our desk refugees from the once United States, telling of homes crushed, and of brother in arms against brother in fratricidal and suicidal war: we have had a blast from that war among our own homes, and our pages have told of one small passage in the wide and deep amount of privation and sorrow which it whelmed over our cotton districts. Death has not been less frequent than usual in his visits among those whose aid we had; nor have we found jealousies less jaundiced, nor envyings less detractive.
But we have had compensations for all these ills. We were able to give occupation to the unemployed and to point out to others those who deserved assistance. When a chasm occurred among our friends others stepped forward to render the vacancy less observable; and as for the jealous and the envious, we had no leisure for being inconvenienced by them.
Thus have we passed on through 1862; and over its close we will inscribe the hope that from its days our readers, as well as ourselves, have passed on into 1863 wiser, happier, wealthier-wealthier not merely in this world's gear. May its harvest of wisdom, happiness, and wealth be even more abundant than that yielded by its predecessor; and we will include in that prayerful hope our brethren across the Atlantic. Many of our readers are there, and they may accept from us as truth that great is the delusion which suggests that "Britishers wish nothing but evil to America." If that fiendish desire actuated our countrymen, they would not so earnestly hope that the internecine war waging there may speedily cease.
Heartily do we join in that hope-nay, more, it is the most prominent in a cluster of good hopes including one for the well-being and well-doing of each and all of our contributors, and another for the vigour and endurance of those so abundantly recording themselves as our "Constant Headers."
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