Excerpt from Ten Times One Is Ten: And Other Stories

HE story of Ten Times One and the other sketches and stories in this volume belong together. The reader will find in its place the briefest possible account of the life of Frederic William Greenleaf, the Harry Wadsworth of that book.

With no expectation of mine, the parable of the story took form immediately in actual life. Miss Ella Elizabeth Russell, of New York, in the end of May, 1870, read this story to a class of boys whom she met every Sunday, in a Sunday School. They were of different ages from thirteen to seventeen. She writes of them, they felt that they were too old to go to any Mission School, but the idea of a Club to meet Sunday afternoons seemed a more grown-up affair. I had read them the story of Harry Wadsworth and as the class was ten in number, they decided to call themselves the Harry Wadsworth Helpers, to adopt the Four Mottoes and to see what they could do to lend a hand.

The boys now are men, and though widely scattered are nearly all doing well. Only yester day I received a letter from one who has been for several years in the Black Hills.

I need not say that I was greatly interested when I heard from Miss Russell that the suggestion of the book had taken concrete form: but I had never thought of this in writing it. As the reader will see if he will turn to the introduction of the first edition of the story, I was simply trying, in an invented example, to show to young people the extent and the rapidity by which the effort of one man extends itself in larger and larger circles if he really looks out and not in and is determined to lend a hand. But some who read were more ready than I had supposed any one would be to try the experiment. The nine people who were at that time nearest to me in the work Of life were fond of calling themselves, with me, the original ten, and I was proud that they were. I like to name them here. They were my wife; my brother Nathan; Caroline Letitia Tallant, whom the reader will find named as Irene in the story called Neither Scrip nor Money John Williams, at that time the assistant minister of our church; Helen Frances Kimball; Benjamin Kimball, to whose suggestion, more than once repeated, the writing of the story was due; Martha H. Brooks; Edward Hale Green leaf, the son of Harry Wadsworth; and my daugh ter, Ellen Day Hale. If we had the original manuscript of the book I suppose we should find the handwriting of each of these ladies, all of whom worked with me in my study, in the charities of the church, or in other ways. The gentlemen also, in one way or another, in the Sunday School.

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