Hannah and I have spent a lovely Christmas Eve with my parents, complete with a delicious roast dinner. We had plenty of good conversation and enjoyed some laughs together.

Mom brought out a collection of old family memorabilia – some of it dating back to the late 1800′s. It’s amazing to see and read old letters, books and other keepsakes that have been carried half-way around the world and kept safe by a variety of people for more than one hundred years. Reading some of the letters that were written was so interesting. I doubt that anybody will be looking back at my emails a century from now. My prose would certainly not hold a candle to what my distant relatives were able to write, either.

In amongst the collection were a number of books. I was flicking through one, entitled Helen’s Babies. It doesn’t have a copyright date, but from what I can tell, it was published around 1890. The thing that tickled my fancy was the dedication. I thought it was so great that it needed to be brought into this modern age, by way of a blog post. So here it is, in all it’s glory:

“Every one knows that there are in the world, hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers, each of whom possess the best children that ever lived. I am, therefore, moved by a sense of the eternal fitness of things to dedicate this little volume to

THE PARENTS OF THE BEST CHILDREN IN THE WORLD,

with the reminder that it is considered the proper thing for each person, to whom a book is dedicated, to purchase and read a copy.”

That, I think, is the best dedication I have ever read.

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