Transcriber’s Notes

Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
Added an original cover image, for free, unrestricted distribution with this Distributed-Proofreaders eBook.
Silently removed the halftitle pages inconsistently printed for chapters, omitting their page numbers.
Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)