author's computation of that former audience of his--his actual
individual voluntary readers of a decade ago--appears to be but
slightly and pardonably exaggerated on the more modest side of the
fact. If there were a Cabell Club of membership determined solely by
the number of those who, already possessing THE CORDS OF VANITY in its
first edition, recognize it as the work of a serious artist of high
achievement and higher capacity, I suspect that the smallness of that
club would be in inordinate disproportion to everything but its
selectness and its members' pride in "belonging".

Be that as it may, the economist-author, on the eve of his book's
emergence from the limbo of "out of print", prefers that it come into
its redemption carrying a foreword by someone who knew it without
dislike in its former incarnation. No contingent liability, it seems,
can dissuade Mr. Cabell from this preference. An author who once
elected to precede a group of his best tales with an introduction
eloquently setting forth reasons why the collection ought not to be
published at all, is hardly to be deterred now by the mere
inexpediency of hitching his star to a farm-wagon. His own graciously
unreasonable insistence must be the excuse, such as it is, for the
present introduction, such as it is. If there may be said to exist a
sort of charter membership in Mr. Cabell's audience, this document is
to be construed as representing its very enthusiastic welcome to the
later and vastly larger elective membership.

And if, weighed as such a welcome, it proves hopelessly inadequate, at
least it provides a number of possible compensations by the way. For
instance, that _New York World_ critic who damned the book but praised
its frontispiece of 1909, has now a uniquely pat opportunity to
balance his ledger by praising the book and damning this foreword,