Well, I can bear it; but in bearing it, I shall be consoled with the
reflection that I have a great company of fellow-sufferers, who lack
only the honesty to tell me of their sympathy. It will even relieve in
no small degree my burden to watch the effort they will take to conceal
what I have so boldly divulged.

Nature is very much the same thing in one man that it is in another;
and, as I have already said, Feeling has a higher truth in it than
circumstance. Let it only be touched fairly and honestly, and the heart
of humanity answers; but if it be touched foully or one-sidedly, you may
find here and there a lame-souled creature who will give response, but
there is no heart-throb in it.

Of one thing I am sure:--if my pictures are fair, worthy, and hearty,
you _must_ see it in the reading; but if they are forced and hard, no
amount of kindness can make you feel their truth, as I want them felt.

I make no self-praise out of this: if feeling has been honestly set
down, it is only in virtue of a native impulse, over which I have
altogether too little control, but if it is set down badly, I have
wronged Nature, and (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself.

A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, be asking, after
all this prelude, if my pictures are true pictures? The question--the
courteous reader will allow me to say--is an impertinent one. It is but
a shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it trustworthy.
I shall not help my story by any such poor support. If there are not
enough elements of truth, honesty, and nature in my pictures to make
them believed, they shall have no oath of mine to bolster them up.