PREFACE.

It is pretty well understood, I presume, that while books are written for the entertainment of the public, a preface has fulfilled its mission if it prove a solace to the author and an edification to the proof-reader thereof. Yet (however it may be with an author) an editor must, it seems, write one.

Most mysteriously, then, and I knew not whence or from whom, the manuscript of this work found itself in my study, some time since, accompanied by the request that I should stand sponsor for it.

I shall do nothing of the kind. True, the grammar of it will pass muster, I think; and its morals are above reproach; but the way our author has of sailing into everything and everybody quite takes my breath away. Lawyers, military men, professors and students, parsons, agnostics, statesmen, billiard-players, novelists, poetesses, saints and sinners—he girds at them all. I should not have a friend left in the world were it to go abroad that this Mr. J. B. Whacker’s opinions were also mine. If but to enter this disclaimer, therefore, I must needs write a preface.