Our Savior bade his disciples gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost; and many who have known of Miss Fiske's fifteen years of labor for women in Persia, have desired her to prepare for publication the facts now presented to the reader. The writer was one of these; and it was only when he found that she could not do it, that he attempted it, in accordance with her wishes, simply that these interesting records of divine grace might not be lost. The materials have been drawn from the letters and conversations of those familiar with the scenes described, and especially from Miss Fiske. In all cases, the language of others has been condensed, as much as is consistent, with the truthful expression of their ideas; and, in the translation of the letters of Nestorians, it has not been deemed essential to follow slavishly every Syriac idiom, for, instead of these letters owing their interest, as some have supposed, to their translators, they may have sometimes rather suffered from renderings needlessly idiomatic.
