Class of '87: Greeting!

Dear Classmates: Having journeyed through the years together, and accomplished the four years' course of reading, as we are now about to part company, I come to you with the promised book dedicated to "Our Class."

I have taken great pleasure in writing it, and hope most earnestly that it will be to you a pleasant souvenir of our Alma Mater.

Perhaps just here is the appropriate place in which to thank many hundreds of you for the helpful letters which you sent to aid me in the preparation of our book. That they were decided helps, you, the writers, have only to read the book, to be convinced; for the incidents found therein were taken from your own letters, which contained statements of facts. I have simply grouped within a few lives, the actual experiences of many. It was my earnest desire to write a book for the '87's which should, in a slight degree, at least, illustrate the manner in which helping hands might be extended by members of the C. L. S. C., reaching lives where they least expected, and setting in motion influences which should tell for eternity. It is not the least of my pleasures that, in writing this book, I have been able to leave the region of plain fiction and revel in the realm of facts. It is delightful to be able to say to you, that wherever you may chance to find suggestive hints through the book as to ways of helping, you may understand that it is not theory, but practice; not what might possibly be done, but what has been done, by the membes of the class of '87; though, in order to make the dates of my story symmetrical, I have been obliged to remove many of the doings of the '87's back into the past, thus apparently giving the honor to the classes of '84, '85, and '86, which properly belong to the '87's. But this you will understand.

And now, trusting that we who gather in the classic groves of the Mother Chautauqua may have the honor of passing through the golden gate together; and hoping and praying that not only we who gather there, but all the great company of those faithful ones who must of necessity abide at home, may meet one day, and pass under the flowery arches of our Father's love, through the golden gate of the Celestial City, "to go no more out forever," I subscribe myself,

Yours, in the Master's service and reward,

Pansy.