it is the pretty unanimous practice of book-writers to continue to write
them with such pains and elaborateness as would indicate a belief that
the success of a book depends upon the favorable prejudice begotten of u
graceful preface. My principal embarrassment is that it is not customary
for a book to have more than one. How then shall I choose between the
half-dozen letters of introduction I might give my story, each better
and worse on many accounts than either of the others? I am rather
inclined to adopt the following, which might for some reasons be
styled the

PREFACE SENTIMENTAL.

Perhaps no writer not infatuated with conceit, can send out a book full
of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth, are his own,
without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And
there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray this nervousness.
I confess to a respect for even the prefatory doggerel of good Tinker
Bunyan--a respect for his paternal tenderness toward his book, not at
all for his villainous rhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white
handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from
me, a profound anxiety seized me. So now, as I part company with August
and Julia, with my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with
the mud-clerk on the Iatan, and the shaggy lord of Shady-Hollow Castle,
and the rest, that have watched with me of nights and crossed the ferry
with me twice a day for half a year--even now, as I see them waving me
adieu with their red silk and "yaller" cotton "hand-kerchers," I know
how many rocks of misunderstanding and criticism and how many shoals of
damning faint praise are before them, and my heart is full of misgiving.

--But it will never do to have misgivings in a preface. How often have