s of Miss Smith. Mrs.
Ford was the granddaughter of Noah Webster (an Amherst man [one of
the founders of Amherst College]) and daughter of Professor Fowler
[the phrenologist], who wrote several books. Eugene Field was, some
years later, a student of the old Academy, and in his poem, My
Playmates, he mentioned by their real names a number of his old
schoolmates. Helen Hunt Jackson was a contemporary of Miss Smith
here, and, although she did not attend the Academy, must have been
well known to her.

Amherst, it should be said, was the home-town of Shirley's family, and
to it she often fondly refers in the Letters. It is not cause for
wonder that she is not now remembered in Amherst. Her correspondence
shows that the members of the family, although devotedly attached to
one another, were inclined to disperse.

Mrs. Mary Viola Tingley Lawrence has kindly permitted the printing in
this volume of a paper prepared by her to be read before a literary
society, containing much that is interesting of Shirley's life. Mrs.
Lawrence is well known among the _literati_ of San Francisco. She was a
contributor to the old Overland. What is of more interest here is the
fact that she was a favorite pupil of Shirley, and later her most
intimate friend in California. It was from a selection of poetry
gathered by Mrs. Lawrence that Bret Harte obtained the larger portion
of his selection entitled "Outcroppings" (San Francisco, 1866), a
title, by the way, claimed by Mrs. Lawrence as her own.

Rich Bar and Indian Bar, in Butte County at the time the Shirley
Letters were written, are now in Plumas County, consequent upon a
change of the county boundary lines. There are two Rich Bars on the
Feather River, the minor one being on the Middle Fork, and oftentimes
mistaken for the one made famous by Shirley. James Graham Fair, one of
the earliest multimillionaires of California, and United States Senator
from Nevada, panned out his first sackful of gold at Rich Bar, and
probably at the time Shirley was writing her Letters. Many other men,
whose names are familiar to Californians, also delved into the earth at
this historic spot, which is now, in railroad "literature," called
"Rich." Like many another California clipped place-name, the new name
has not the glamour of the old, which, in the words of Shirley, was "a
most taking name."

In closing this Foreword, the printer desires to emphasize the fact
that the typesett