Sister Carrie

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[A hand-writted note, transcribed below, appeared on the first page of this copy of the book. The etext transcriber cannot attest to its authenticity.]

My Dear Mr. Norris:

Owing as I do so very much to your earliest and most unqualified approval of this story in manuscript form it is my determination to inscribe a copy to you whether you will or no. That it reaches either you or the public "under cover" so soon is due entirely to you. Therefore refuse not a corner on the family table to the off-spring you so generously fostered; neither attempt to deny in the future that your sins do find you out.

With the most grateful remembrances I am,

Sincerely yours

Dreiser

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.

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