Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTE. Just as we have sent the last sheet of the manuscript to the printer, our publishers write that an Introduction, a brief one, is desirable. We might yield to their judgment what we should be alow to extract from our own indifference. A Preface is an author’s observation on his own writings. It might be presumed that a reader would be better prepared to understand, and more disposed to listen to what an author would say, at the end of a book than at the beginning. Acting upon this consideration, we have included in the last chapter certain paragraphs that may seem to possess a prefatory character. To these all persons interested are respectfully referred. We have endeavored, moreover, that, in the progress of the work, the curiosity of the reader should be duly satisfied on any points that might engage it. A Tale is not like a house, except in its door-plate, the title-page. It does not require an entry or a reception-room. It is rather like a rose, the sum of the qualities of which are visible at a glance; albeit it will repay a minute attention, and affords material for prolonged enjoyment. It is like a landscape, which appeals in like manner to a comprehensive eye, rather than to critical inquiry. We incline, then, to the rose and the landscape, notwithstanding there may be a defective leaf in the first, or a rude hut in the last. Not that we object to Prefaces; ? we like them, we always read them, and frequently find them the best part of a book. But this book is written, and the author has put his best things into it; he cannot hope to improve it by anything he might here add, and he is indisposed to peril its fortunes on any uncertainties of speech or manner; and therefore prefers to submit it as it is. chapter{Section 4CHAPTER I. RICHARD COMES TO THE CITY. …
