capitals, maintaining that they disfigure the page, and what is a
preface of the high philosophical sort worth without a profusion of
capitals? Even Carlyle's columns would lose their greatest ornament if
their capitals were gone. The second reason for declining to use this
preface was that my publishers are not philosophers and would never be
content with an "Elect Few," and for my own part the pecuniary interest
I have in the copyright renders it quite desirable that as many as
possible should be elected to like it, or at least to buy it.

After all it seems a pity that I can not bring myself to use a
straightforward

APOLOGETIC AND EXPLANATORY PREFACE.

In view of the favor bestowed upon the author's previous story, both by
the Public who Criticise and the Public who Buy, it seems a little
ungracious to present so soon, another, the scene of which is also laid
in the valley of the Ohio. But the picture of Western country life in
"The Hoosier School-Master" would not have been complete without this
companion-piece, which presents a different phase of it. And indeed
there is no provincial life richer in material if only one knew how to
get at it.

Nothing is more reverent than a wholesome hatred of hypocrisy. If any
man think I have offended against his religion, I must believe that his
religion is not what it should be. If anybody shall imagine that this is
a work of religious controversy leveled at the Adventists, he will have
wholly mistaken my meaning. Literalism and fanaticism are not vices
confined to any one sect. They are, unfortunately, pretty widely
distributed. However, if--