bare-ly remarking that as its unfurnished state may disappoint you, I will endeavor to restore your pleasing illusion, by giving you gratuitously
An Inside View,
flattering myself that, although you may find nothing in it, you will at least confess, that seldom dare an author venture upon such an exposure of his stock in trade.
Having now furnished all the main elements which will enable my pupil readers to outline my intellectual portraiture, having frankly shown four sides of myself,—a lower side and an upper side, an outside and inside,—being the only sides, I trust, that I shall take in this history, I crave leave now to add, secondly, a word as to the plan, object, and principles of this history. They are, in brief, to put facts, veritable and authentic facts, whether agreeable or disagreeable in themselves, in that pleasing dress that will make them welcome visitors to the drawing-room, good chums in the bedchamber, chatty companions in the cars, on steamers and steamboats, jolly physicians to the dyspeptically lean, and pleasantly wise counsellors to the troubled.
I feel so sure that, as not one of the illuminated readers of these chronicles has ever mistaken dulness for wisdom, so not one will need be reminded that the most solid and trusted truths may wear the smiles of joy and hilarity.
The Romans on their solemn festival days were wont to carry in their processions the images of their ancestors, even those long deceased, wreathed with flowers. So carry we the images of the Past, garlanded with the rosy links of fun and jollity.
We shall not be tempted by the lure of originality, nor even by the attractive ambition of gaining credit for profound critical and historical acumen, to follow the late fashion of dressing up stale and unwholesome characters in fine clothes and qualities. We shall neither foist the virtuous regimentals and well-earned epaulettes of Washington upon Benedict Arnold, nor tease history to fling a mantle of false charity over Burr’s treason. We shall not worry the public conscience into any praise, however faint, of the crimson waistcoat of Mr. Jefferson Davis, nor waste any admiration upon the spotted neck-tie, perhaps too loosely drawn, of Jacob Thompson. Impartial justice shall hold our tape and handle our shears.
It is usual for historians to indicate the sources of their information; but as we have refused no means of enriching these annals, using for that purpose whatever materials our multiform reading could supply, from the Ramayana, the great Sanscrit epic, impressed on wax, down to the last published child’s primer, printed on patented wooden paper, we could not name all our authorities without giving a catalogue inconvenient for our publishers, and too long for the abridged lives of our readers. We cannot, however, refrain from acknowledging our obligations to John Smith, Esq., for original information, novel ideas, and new turns of thought around old notions, running through every page of this history; to Mr. Jones, for valuable public documents; and to Mr. Brown, the well-known sexton of Grace Church, New York, who in the course of his lifelong diggings, has exhumed several pieces of Americans, whom we have reconstructed and preserved in our historical cases.
As to the illustrations which flash upon and light up our pages, they will speak for themselves; if they do not, any word of ours would be, Vox et preterea nihil.