The Four-Masted Cat-Boat, and Other Truthful Tales

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
The name Dvořák uses the letter r with a caron; this letter may display incorrectly on some devices.
The Four-Masted Cat-Boat And Other Truthful Tales By Charles Battell Loomis With illustrations by Florence Scovel Shinn
New York The Century Co. 1899
Copyright, 1899, by The Century Co.
The De Vinne Press.
TO MY BROTHER HARVEY WORTHINGTON LOOMIS I DEDICATE THIS COLLECTION OF SKETCHES C. B. L.

To send a book into the world without a preface is like thrusting a bashful man into a room full of company without introducing him; and there could be only one thing worse than that,—to a bashful man,—and that would be to introduce him.
In introducing my book to the reader (how like a book-agent that sounds!) I wish to say that the only bond of union between the various sketches is that they were all done by the same hand—or hands, as they were written on a typewriter.
Whether it would have added to their interest to have placed the same characters in each sketch is not for me to say, but it would have been a great bother to do it, and in getting up a book the thing to avoid is bother. It hasn’t bothered me to write it. I hope it won’t bother you to read it, for I’d hate to have you bothered on my account.
C. B. L.