Writing under this conviction, I have not forgotten my responsibility
towards you, and towards my Art, in pleading the cause of the harmless
and affectionate beings of God's creation. From first to last, you are
purposely left in ignorance of the hideous secrets of Vivisection. The
outside of the laboratory is a necessary object in my landscape--but I
never once open the door and invite you to look in. I trace, in one of
my characters, the result of the habitual practice of cruelty (no
matter under what pretence) in fatally deteriorating the nature of
man--and I leave the picture to speak for itself. My own personal
feeling has throughout been held in check. Thankfully accepting the
assistance rendered to me by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, by Mrs. H. M.
Gordon, and by Surgeon-General Gordon, C.B., I have borne in mind (as
they have borne in mind) the value of temperate advocacy to a good
cause.

With this, your servant withdraws, and leaves you to the story.

II.

TO READERS IN PARTICULAR.

If you are numbered among those good friends of ours, who are
especially capable of understanding us and sympathising with us, be
pleased to accept the expression of our gratitude, and to pass over the
lines that follow.

But if you open our books with a mind soured by distrust; if you
habitually anticipate inexcusable ignorance where the course of the
story happens to turn on matters of fact; it is you, Sir or Madam, whom
I now want.