MY REASONS TO THE KIND AND ALMOST GENTLE READER
WHY
I DON’T HAVE NO PREFACE TO THIS BOOK.
My companion, Josiah, knew that my book was all finished and completed, and so one lovely day about half past four, P. M. in the afternoon, when he see me walk with a firm and even step up to the mantletry piece and take down my bottle of ink and my steel mounted pen, he says to me:
“What are you goin’ to writin’ on now, Samantha?”
Says I mildly, “I thought I’d lay to and write a preface to my book, Josiah. I thought I’d tell ’em that I had wrote it all down about you and I goin’ on a tower to Filadelfy village to see the Sentinel.”
“I guess after you have wrote it all out in black ink in a book, about our goin’ to the Sentimental, folks that read it will find out we have been there, without your writin’ a preface to tell ’em of it. They will unless they are dumb fools.”
He snapped out awful snappish. I couldn’t think what ailed him, and says I firmly:
“Stop swearin’ instantly and to once, Josiah Allen!” And I added again in mild axents: “I guess I’ll lay to and write my preface, Josiah; you know there has got to be one.”
“Why has there got to be one?”
Oh! how fractious and sharp that “why” was. I never see a sharper, more worrysome “why” in my hull life than that “why” was. But I kep’ cool, and says I in calm tones:
“Because there has; Folks always have prefaces, Josiah.”