conditions which I sought are all fulfilled in you. From that day to this, in all our intercourse, I have found in you the faithful friend, the man of unblemished honor and unselfish ambition, to whom the author's interests were never secondary to his own. According to the poet Campbell, we should be "natural enemies," but I dedicate this book to you as my natural friend. I am aware how much is required for the construction of a good work of fiction-how much I venture in entering upon a field so different from those over which I have hitherto been ranging. It is, however, the result of ne sudden whim, no ambition casually provoked. The plan of the following story has long been familiar to my mind. I perceived peculiarities of development in American life which have escaped the notice of novelists, yet which are strikingly adapted to the purposes of fiction, both in the originality and occasional grotesqueness of their external manifestation, and the deeper questions which lie beneath the surface. I do not, therefore, rest the interest of the book on its slender plot, but on the fidelity with which it represents certain types of character and phases of society. That in it which most resembles caricature is oftenest the transcript of actual fact, and there are none of the opinions uttered by the various characters which may not now and then be heard in almost any country community of the Northern and Western States. Whether those opinions are to be commended or condemned, the personages of the story are alone responsible for them. I beg leave, once more, to protest against the popular superstition that an author must necessarily represent himself in one form or another. I am neither Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Waldo, nor Seth Wattles. This is all I have to say. The intelligent reader will require no further explanation, and you no further assurance of how steadily and faithfully I am your friend, BAYARD TAYLOR. WOOD'S HOTEL, LONDON, |