PREFACE 



THE author has this consolation : a 

 preface is the whim of the publisher, 

 and so no reasonable reader will look for 

 literary merit in this perfun&ory feature of a 

 book. 



I have one statement to make that gives 

 me great satisfaction and is in place here, if 

 anywhere. I wrote the following pages for 

 my own amusement, and never for an instant 

 had in mind either the patience of a possible 

 reader or the views of any publisher as to 

 what a book should be. I have not adopted 

 a single suggestion made by critics of earlier 

 volumes, but gone out of my way to repeat 

 the offence, complained of recently, of sneer- 

 ing at the impudent assumption of some, 

 necessarily nameless. For once, I have said 

 my say in precisely my own fashion. Never 

 before has this privilege been unrestrictedly 

 allowed me, and not improbably there are 



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