ELSIE VENNER

By Oliver Wendell Holmes



PREFACE.

This tale was published in successive parts in the "Atlantic Monthly,"
under the name of "The Professor's Story," the first number having
appeared in the third week of December, 1859. The critic who is curious
in coincidences must refer to the Magazine for the date of publication of
the chapter he is examining.

In calling this narrative a "romance," the Author wishes to make sure of
being indulged in the common privileges of the poetic license. Through
all the disguise of fiction a grave scientific doctrine may be detected
lying beneath some of the delineations of character. He has used this
doctrine as a part of the machinery of his story without pledging his
absolute belief in it to the extent to which it is asserted or implied.
It was adopted as a convenient medium of truth rather than as an accepted
scientific conclusion. The reader must judge for himself what is the
value of various stories cited from old authors. He must decide how much
of what has been told he can accept either as having actually happened,
or as possible and more or less probable. The Author must be permitted,
however, to say here, in his personal character, and as responsible to
the students of the human mind and body, that since this story has been
in progress he has received the most startling confirmation of the
possibility of the existence of a character like that which he had drawn
as a purely imaginary conception in Elsie Venner.