As a writer of books, I confess myself to be a good stage craftsman.
I have never before attempted authorship, and this volume is simply a spontaneous outpouring of my personal love and knowledge of a great art that has filled my years with joy and happiness, and some renown in the theatrical world.
To have been one modest part of an instrument that has piped to pleasure many millions of my fellows, is surely justification for personal satisfaction. How this playing has been done, how it is being done today in greater degree than ever before, is what I have in mind to tell a curious public.
And so I became an author for this once, and what you may discover that I lack in literary ability, let me trust you will find compensated for in the plainness and simplicity of the facts, incidents and reminiscences that I relate. If not the manner, at least the matter is worthy of your approval.
My story is presented in the first person, and this is because I find it easiest to write from a personal viewpoint—not, I hope, as the result of any special desire to see the letter I in print. A more experienced author would be able to write this book with less suggestion of ego in its pages, I have little doubt, and so I have called this explanatory word An Apology that you may understand why things are as they are, and not demand of the tyro the same quality of literary excellence that you would be justified in expecting of the better qualified writer.
To paraphrase one of my earliest school-boy speeches,—"If this be an apology, make the most of it."
