This novel represents the last word in up-to-date fiction.
It is well known that the modern novel has got far beyond
the point of mere story-telling. The childish attempt to
INTEREST the reader has long since been abandoned by all
the best writers. They refuse to do it. The modern novel
must convey a message, or else it must paint a picture,
or remove a veil, or open a new chapter in human psychology.
Otherwise it is no good. SPOOF does all of these things.
The reader rises from its perusal perplexed, troubled,
and yet so filled with information that rising itself is
a difficulty.

We cannot, for obvious reasons, insert the whole of the
first chapter. But the portion here presented was praised
by The Saturday Afternoon Review as giving one of the
most graphic and at the same time realistic pictures of
America ever written in fiction.

Of the characters whom our readers are to imagine seated
on the deck--on one of the many decks (all connected by
elevators)--of the Gloritania, one word may be said. Vere
de Lancy is (as the reviewers have under oath declared)
a typical young Englishman of the upper class. He is
nephew to the Duke of--, but of this fact no one on
the ship, except the captain, the purser, the steward,
and the passengers are, or is, aware.

In order entirely to conceal his identity, Vere de Lancy
is travelling under the assumed name of Lancy de Vere.
In order the better to hide the object of his journey,