MRS. CAUDLE'S CURTAIN LECTURES BY DOUGLAS JERROLD




AUTHOR'S PREFACE



It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty
gentlewomen have asked him--and asked in various notes of wonder,
pity, and reproof -

"What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle?

"How could such a thing have entered any man's mind?"

There are subjects that seem like rain drops to fall upon a man's
head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter. The
result of no train of thought, there is the picture, the statue, the
book, wafted, like the smallest seed, into the brain to feed upon the
soil, such as it may be, and grow there. And this was, no doubt, the
accidental cause of the literary sowing and expansion--unfolding like
a night-flower--of MRS. CAUDLE.

But let a jury of gentlewomen decide.

It was a thick, black wintry afternoon, when the writer stopt in the
front of the playground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed
with boys full of the Saturday's holiday. The earth seemed roofed