Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PREFACE. If, in these records of a life which was held in the chains of rankling secrecy, there is too much of shadow; and too little of the smiling day, remember that the clouded life was dear to her who writes these pages; and if the pen lingers too fondly, too ardently, as oft it may, on her whose sorrows were sublime, because sublimely hidden from the eyes of love, remember with pity the Southern heart which drank deeply of icy woes, and had tolearn the hard lesson of patience. THE AUTHOR. CORNUCG OOO S (©)