books which are really mine--my own in thought, in spirit, in
teaching--and those which I have produced, sorely against my will,
to satisfy editors, I propose in future to add the words, "A Hill-
top Novel," to every one of my stories which I write of my own
accord, simply and solely for the sake of embodying and enforcing
my own opinions.

Not that, as critics have sometimes supposed me to mean, I ever
wrote a line, even in fiction, contrary to my own profound beliefs.
I have never said a thing I did not think: but I have sometimes had
to abstain from saying many things I did think. When I wished to
purvey strong meat for men, I was condemned to provide milk for
babes. In the Hill-top Novels, I hope to reverse all that--to say
my say in my own way, representing the world as it appears to me,
not as editors and formalists would like me to represent it.

The Hill-top Novels, however, will not constitute, in the ordinary
sense, a series. I shall add the name, as a Trade Mark, to any
story, by whomsoever published, which I have written as the
expression of my own individuality. Nor will they necessarily
appear in the first instance in volume form. If ever I should be
lucky enough to find an editor sufficiently bold and sufficiently
righteous to venture upon running a Hill-top Novel as a serial
through his columns, I will gladly embrace that mode of
publication. But while editors remain as pusillanimous and as
careless of moral progress as they are at present, I have little
hope that I shall persuade any one of them to accept a work written
with a single eye to the enlightenment and bettering of humanity.

Whenever, therefore, in future, the words "A Hill-top Novel" appear