The author wishes to express his thanks to S. S. McClure & Co., F. A. Munsey, The Shortstory Publishing Company, and others, for their courtesy in allowing him book rights on the following tales.
PREFACE.
A PREFACE is the place where an author usually apologizes to the public for what he is about to inflict. Such being the case, I hasten to state that I am only jointly responsible for this aggregation of tales, which resemble, more than anything else, the creations of a disordered brain.
The origin of the Welsh Rarebit Tales was as follows: A certain literary club, of which I am a member, is accustomed to hold semi-occasional meetings at some of the uptown hotels. At the close of the dinner each of the fifteen members is permitted to read to the others what he considers his most acute spasm since the previous meeting. The good and bad points of the manuscript are then discussed, and we believe that much mutual benefit is thereby derived.
Having run short of first-class plots, the club at a recent meeting decided to try a gastro-literary experiment. Knowing the effect upon the digestive and cerebral organs of indulging in concentrated food before retiring, we each and every one partook, just before adjourning, of the following combination:—
1 Large Portion Welsh Rarebit,
1 Broiled Live Lobster,