publishers told me this! Ah! if I could write with half the heart and
hope my publishers evince in their advertisements, where they talk about
"front rank" and "great American story" and all that, it would doubtless
be better for the book, provided anybody would read the preface or
believe it when they had read it. But at any rate let us not have a
preface in the minor key.

A philosophical friend of mine, who is addicted to Carlyle, has
recommended that I try the following, which he calls

THE HIGH PHILOSOPHICAL PREFACE.

Why should I try to forestall the Verdict? Is it not foreordained in the
very nature of a Book and the Constitution of the Reader that a certain
very Definite Number of Readers will misunderstand and dislike a given
Book? And that another very Definite Number will understand it and
dislike it none the less? And that still a third class, also definitely
fixed in the Eternal Nature of Things, will misunderstand and like it,
and, what is more, like it only because of their misunderstanding? And
in relation to a true Book, there can not fail to be an Elect Few who
understand admiringly and understandingly admire. Why, then, make bows,
write prefaces, attempt to prejudice the Case? Can I change the Reader?
Will I change the Book? No? Then away with Preface! The destiny of the
Book is fixed. I can not foretell it, for I am no prophet. But let us
not hope to change the Fates by our prefatory bowing and scraping.

--I was forced to confess to my friend who was so kind as to offer to
lend me this preface, that there was much truth in it and that truth is
nowhere more rare than in prefaces, but it was not possible to adopt it
for two reasons: one, that my proof-reader can not abide so many