education and simple status, I beseech you not to look upon yourself
as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however small, to help me.
Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with his fellow men
will have remarked something which has remained hidden from the eyes
of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me of your
comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book with
attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein.

For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is
sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be
acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein
would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and
undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before
him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to
recall his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in
contact, and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has
heard of from others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may
tally with his own experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the
book, and to jot down the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his
memory, and, lastly, to send me the jottings as they may issue from
his pen, and to continue doing so until he has covered the entire
work! Yes, he would indeed do me a vital service! Of style or beauty
of expression he would need to take no account, for the value of a
book lies in its truth and its actuality rather than in its wording.
Nor would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should
feel minded to blame or to upbraid me, or to demonstrate the harm
rather than the good which has been done through any lack of thought
or verisimilitude of which I have been guilty. In short, for anything
and for everything in the way of criticism I should be thankful.