GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH"

"And David arose and fled to Gath. And he changed his behavior. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him. And the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months."

H. CAMPBELL & CO., Publishers,
No. 21 Park Row,
NEW YORK

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880,
By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

The Burr Printing House
and Steam Type-setting Office,
Cor. Frankfort and Jacob Sts.,
NEW YORK.

TO TEN FRIENDS AT DINNER,
Gilsey House, New York,
April 21, 1879;
WHO MADE THIS PUBLICATION
A PROMISE AND AN OBLIGATION.

PREFACE.

So far from the first tale in this book being of political motive, it was written among the subjects of it, and read to several of them in 1864. Perhaps the only souvenir of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American picture about contemporary with the European tales.