seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your
countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.


NOTICE.

Persons attempting to find a motive in
this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.


The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must
not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me
nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.

Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.
--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not