_October, the 21st day, in the year '48._

G.P. PUTNAM, BROADWAY.


It being the commonest mode of procedure, I premise a few candid remarks

TO THE READER:--

This trifle, begun to please only myself and my own private fancy, was
laid on the shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, induced me, by
dint of saying they liked it, to put it in print. That is, having come
to that very conclusion, I asked their advice when 'twould make no
confusion. For though (in the gentlest of ways) they had hinted it was
scarce worth the while, I should doubtless have printed it.

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender thing, rhymeywinged,
with a sting in its tail. But, by addings and alterings not previously
planned, digressions chance-hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and
dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand (always freeing the bird which
I held In my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out of reach, in the
tree),--it grew by degrees to the size which you see. I was like the old
woman that carried the calf, and my neighbors, like hers, no doubt,
wonder and laugh; and when, my strained arms with their grown burthen
full, I call it my Fable, they call it a bull.

Having scrawled at full gallop (as far as that goes) in a style that is
neither good verse nor bad prose, and being a person whom nobody knows,
some people will say I am rather more free with my readers than it is
becoming to be, that I seem to expect them to wait on my leisure in