To HENRY REICHARDT, Esq.

My dear Reichardt,

Here is the result of two years’ hard work for your perusal; the outcome of delving amid musty, dusty files of by-gone newspapers; of research among forgotten books, and pamphlets curious and controversial; of country jaunts along this old road both for pleasures sake and for taking the notes and sketches that go towards making up the story of this old highway.

You will appreciate, more than most, the difficulties of contriving a well-ordered narrative of times so clean forgotten as those of old-road travel, and better still will you perceive the largeness of the task of transmuting the notes and sketches of this undertaking into paper and print. Hence this dedication.

Yours, &c.,
CHARLES G. HARPER.