In coming before the public with a newly made edition of my writings,
what can I say to my reader at this stage of our acquaintance that
will lead to a better understanding between us? Probably nothing. We
understand each other very well already. I have offered myself as his
guide to certain matters out of doors, and to a few matters indoor,
and he has accepted me upon my own terms, and has, on the whole been
better pleased with me than I had any reason to expect. For this I am
duly grateful; why say more? Yet now that I am upon my feet, so as to
speak, and palaver is the order, I will keep on a few minutes longer.

It is now nearly a quarter of a century since my first book,
"Wake-Robin," was published. I have lived nearly as many years in the
world as I had lived when I wrote its principal chapters. Other
volumes have followed, and still others. When asked how many there
are, I often have to stop and count them up. I suppose the mother of a
large family does not have to count up her children to say how many
there are. She sees their faces all before her. It is said of certain
savage tribes who cannot count above five, and yet who own flocks and
herds, that every native knows when he has got all his own cattle, not
by counting, but by remembering each one individually.

The savage is with his herds daily; the mother has the love of her
children constantly in her heart; but when one's book goes forth from
him, in a sense it never returns. It is like the fruit detached from
the bough. And yet to sit down and talk of one's books as a father
might talk of his sons, who had left his roof and gone forth to make
their own way in the world, is not an easy matter. The author's
relation to his book is a little more direct and personal, after all,
more a matter of will and choice, than a father's relation to his