PRELIMINARY
I have the honour humbly to inform my readers that, after prolonged consumption of midnight oil, I succeeded in completing this imposing society novel, which is now, by the indulgence of my friends and kind fathers, the honble publishers, laid at their feet.
My inducement to this enterprise was the spectacle of very inferior rubbish palmed off by so-called popular novelists such as Honbles Kipling, Joshua Barrie, Antony Weyman, Stanley Hope, and the collaborative but feminine authoresses of "The Red Thumb in the Pottage," all of whom profess (very, very incorrectly) to give accurate reliable descriptions of Indian, English or Scotch episodes.
The pity of it, that a magnificent and gullible British Public should be suckled like a babe on such spoonmeat and small beer!
Would no one arise, inflamed by the pure enthusiasm of his cacoethes scribendi, and write a romance which shall secure the plerophory of British, American, Anglo-Indian, Colonial, and Continental readers by dint of its imaginary power and slavish fidelity to Nature?
And since Echo answered that no one replied to this invitation, I (like a fool, as some will say) rushed in where angels were apprehensive of being too bulky to be borne.
Being naturally acquainted with gentlemen of my own nationality and education, and also, of course, knowing London and suburban society ab ovo usque ad mala (or, from the new-laid egg to the stage when it is beginning to go bad), I decided to take as my theme the adventures of a typically splendid representative of Young India on British soil, and I am in earnest hopes to avoid the shocking solecisms and exaggerations indulged in by ordinary English novelists.
I have been compelled to take to penmanship of this sort owing to pressure of res angusta domi, the immoderate increase of hostages to fortune, and proportionate falling off of emoluments from my profession as Barrister-at-Law.
Therefore, I hope that all concerned will smile favourably upon my new departure, and will please kindly understand that, if my English literary style has suffered any deterioration, it is solely due to my being out of practice, and such spots on the sun must be excused as mere flies in ointment.
After forming my resolution of writing a large novel, I confided it to my crony, Mr Ram Ashootosh Lall, who warmly recommended me to persevere in such a magnum opus. So I became divinely inflated periodically every evening from 8 to 12 P.M., disregarding all entreaties from feminine relatives to stop and indulge in a blow-out on ordinary eatables, like Archimedes when Troy was captured, who was so engrossed in writing prepositions on the sand that he was totally unaware that he was being barbarously slaughtered.