Life and Letters of Frederic Shields

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. With these words, a few weeks before his death, Frederic Shields began the story of his life, having collected together many scattered sheets of reminiscences written at different times for various purposes, inhumer able letters, and a series of diaries extending over a period of more than sixty years. It seems fitting that one to whom he entrusted this varied collection, Should endeavour to complete the task, for which there is certainly no lack of facts or data. Whether the facts will be only those which Frederic Shields would have wished to record, or how far the view given of that vivid personality will resemble that which he himself would have shown to the world, I cannot tell. But so far as is possible, he shall speak for himself, whether in the universal language, of which he was one of the greatest modern interpreters, or the forcible English in which, day by day, he recorded his life, from the time when, at the age of fourteen, he opened the shutters of his mother's tiny Shop and spent his starved and strenuous boyhood in pursuit of his ideal.