PREFACE.
[IN THE POTENTIAL MOOD.]
It is the pretty unanimous conclusion of book-writers that
prefaces are most unnecessary and useless prependages, since nobody
reads them. And it is the pretty unanimous practice of
book-writers to continue to write them with such pains and
elaborateness as would indicate a belief that the success
of a book depends upon the favorable prejudice begotten of
a graceful preface. My principal embarrassment is that it is
not customary for a book to have more than one. How
then shall I choose between the half-dozen letters of introduction
I might give my story, each better and worse on
many accounts than either of the others? I am rather
inclined to adopt the following, which might for some reasons
be styled the
PREFACE SENTIMENTAL.
Perhaps no writer not infatuated with conceit, can send out a
book full of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be
worth, are his own, without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate
of his offspring. And there are few prefaces which do not in some
way betray this nervousness. I confess to a respect for even the
prefatory doggerel of good Tinker Bunyan—a respect for his paternal
tenderness toward his book, not at all for his villainous rhyming.
When I saw, the other day, the white handkerchiefs of my children
waving an adien as they sailed away from me, a profound anxiety
seized me. So now, as I part company with August and Julia, with
my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with the
mud-clerk on the Iatan, and the shaggy lord of Shady-Hollow Castle,
and the rest, that have watched with me of nights and crossed the
ferry with me twice a day for half a year—even now, as I see them
waving me adieu with their red silk and “yaller” cotton “handkerchers,”
I know how many rocks of misunderstanding and criticism
and how many shoals of damning faint praise are before them,
and my heart is full of misgiving.
—But it will never do to have misgivings in a preface. How
often have publishers told me this! Ah! if I could write with
half the heart and hope my publishers evince in their advertisements,
where they talk about “front rank” and “great American
story” and all that, it would doubtless be better for the
book, provided anybody would read the preface or believe it
when they had read it. But at any rate let us not have a
preface in the minor key.
A philosophical friend of mine, who is addicted to Carlyle,
has recommended that I try the following, which he calls
THE HIGH PHILOSOPHICAL PREFACE.
Why should I try to forestall the Verdict? Is it not foreordained
in the very nature of a Book and the Constitution of the Reader
that a certain very Definite Number of Readers will misunderstand
and dislike a given Book? And that another very Definite Number
will understand it and dislike it none the less? And that still a
third class, also definitely fixed in the Eternal Nature of Things, will
misunderstand and like it, and, what is more, like it only because
of their misunderstanding? And in relation to a true Book, there
can not fail to be an Elect Few who understand admiringly and
understandingly admire. Why, then, make bows, write prefaces,
attempt to prejudice the Case? Can I change the Reader? Will I
change the Book? No? Then away with Preface! The destiny of
the Book is fixed. I can not foretell it, for I am no prophet. But let
us not hope to change the Fates by our prefatory bowing and scraping.
—I was forced to confess to my friend who was so kind as to
offer to lend me this preface, that there was much truth in it
and that truth is nowhere more rare than in prefaces, but
it was not possible to adopt it, for two reasons: one, that
my proof-reader can not abide so many capitals, maintaining
that they disfigure the page, and what is a preface of the
high philosophical sort worth without a profusion of capitals?
Even Carlyle's columns would lose their greatest ornament if
their capitals were gone. The second reason for declining to
use this preface was that my publishers are not philosophers
and would never be content with an “Elect Few,” and for
my own part the pecuniary interest I have in the copyright
renders it quite desirable that as many as possible should be
elected to like it, or at least to buy it.
After all it seems a pity that I can not bring myself to use a
straightforward
APOLOGETIC AND EXPLANATORY PREFACE.
In view of the favor bestowed upon the author's previous story, both
by the Public who Criticise and the Public who Buy, it seems a little
ungracious to present so soon, another, the scene of which is also
laid in the valley of the Ohio. But the picture of Western country
life in “The Hoosier School-Master” would not have been complete
without this companion-piece, which presents a different phase of it.
And indeed there is no provincial life richer in material if only one
knew how to get at it.
Nothing is more reverent than a wholesome hatred of hypocrisy.
If any man think I have offended against his religion, I must
believe that his religion is not what it should be. If anybody
shall imagine that this is a work of religious controversy leveled
at the Adventists, he will have wholly mistaken my meaning. Literalism
and fanaticism are not vices confined to any one sect. They
are, unfortunately, pretty widely distributed. However, if —
—And so on.
But why multiply examples of the half-dozen or more that
I might, could, would, or should have written? Since everybody
is agreed that nobody reads a preface, I have concluded
to let the book go without any.
Brooklyn, September, 1872.
