It would then be comprehensible to all University men; your logic
would be duly and deliberately weighed: and the tanners and
tinkers, who are so very impressionable, would not be poisoned by
it." "My friend," said the Revolutionist, "it is the tanners and
tinkers _I_ want to get at. My object is, to win this election;
University graduates will not help me to win it."

The business of the preacher is above all things to preach; but in
order to preach, he must first reach his audience. The audience in
this case consists in large part of women and girls, who are most
simply and easily reached by fiction. Therefore, fiction is today
the best medium for the preacher of righteousness who addresses
humanity.

Why, once more, this particular name, "A Hill-top Novel"? For
something like this reason.

I am writing in my study on a heather-clad hill-top. When I raise
my eye from my sheet of foolscap, it falls upon miles and miles of
broad open moorland. My window looks out upon unsullied nature.
Everything around is fresh and pure and wholesome. Through the open
casement, the scent of the pines blows in with the breeze from the
neighbouring firwood. Keen airs sigh through the pine-needles.
Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles of bracken. The song of a
skylark drops from the sky like soft rain in summer; in the
evening, a nightjar croons to us his monotonously passionate love-
wail from his perch on the gnarled boughs of the wind-swept larch
that crowns the upland. But away below in the valley, as night
draws on, a lurid glare reddens the north-eastern horizon. It marks
the spot where the great wen of London heaves and festers. Up here