Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company
All rights reserved.
Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.
Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.
Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what American art and American literature have done and are doing for the directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of character and inner sensations.
The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an electric shock.