The Siege of the Seven Suitors

The Siege of The Seven Suitors
MEREDITH NICHOLSON
AUTHOR OF THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CANDLES, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY C. COLES PHILLIPS AND REGINALD BIRCH
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October 1910
TO THE HONORABLE THOMAS R. MARSHALL
MY DEAR GOVERNOR:—It was ordered by the franchises of destiny that you become the chief executive of a state in which the telling of tales brightened the hunter's camp-fire and cheered the lonely pioneer's cabin before our people learned the uses of ink; and the supreme fitness of this lies in the fact that you are yourself the best of story-tellers and entitled, for your excellence in this particular, as well as for weightier reasons, to sit at the head of the table in that commonwealth to which we are both bound by many and dear ties.
The morning brings to your mail-box so many demands, necessitating the most varied and delicate balancings and adjustments, that I serve you ill in adding to your burdens the little packet that contains this tale. Pray consider, however, that I have hidden it discreetly beneath a pile of documents touching nearly the state's business; or that I hastily serve it upon you in the highway, an unsanctioned writ from that high court of letters in which I am the least valiant among the bailiffs.
Sincerely yours, M. N.
MACKINAC ISLAND, August 10, 1910.