English tongue were not translated from the original Hungarian text,
while others, through want of a final perusal, were introduced to the
public marred by numerous faults.

In the present edition we have striven to give the English reading
public a correct translation, for which an authorized text has been
utilized by the Doubleday & McClure Co., who have sole right for
publishing future English translations of my books.

Between the United States and Hungary we discover many common traits:
the same state-creative energy in the predominant people, which finds
expression in constitutional forms, relying upon the love of freedom,
which unites so many different races in one uniform whole; the same
independent institutions; the same ideas in religion, in ethics; the
same respect for women, the same esteem of labor, the same mental
culture; a striving after progress, yet side by side with this a high
respect for traditions; the same poetry of agriculture, the same prose
of industry; rapid progress of both, and in consequence thereof an
impetuous growth of towns.

Yet, while we find so many common traits between America and Hungary in
the great field of theory, those typical figures which here in Hungary
represent such theories must make a novel and extraordinary _entrée_ in
the New World, that they may deserve to win the interest of the foreign
reader.

Hungary still represents a piece and parcel of the Old World; she is not
so much Europe as a modern Asia. My novels centre round those peculiar
figures of Hungarian common life; and in every work of mine a bit of
history of true common life will be found described. I have had a