University of Virginia Library

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INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

It was the original intention of the author of the “Dancing Feather”
to have extended that work to fifty chapters, or the usual length of a novel
of two volumes. But the editor of the paper to whom it was communicated
in weekly numbers, requested, after six chapters had been published,
that it should be limited to ten chapters. This desire of the publisher the
author complied with, though with injury both to the plot and the harmonious
construction of the Romance. The favorable reception of “The
Dancing Feather,” even in this abridged character, induced its publisher to
reprint and re-issue it in a cheap octavo form. Its unlooked for popularity
in this shape, and the frequent calls for it even now, has induced the writer
to carry out, in some degree, his first intention, and to present the public
with a Sequel, commencing with the night of the mysterious departure
from her anchoring ground of the schooner “The Dancing Feather”—to
the story with which title the reader is referred.

Now a word in reply to certain questions which have been very perseveringly
put to the author in relation to the identity of Morris Græme and
Carleton, by several readers of both sexes, who have done him the honor to
glance over the pages of “The Dancing Feather”; to which, as they are all
embraced in the following anonymous note, some time since received
through the post, we shall reply by copying our answer to the writer:

Sir—I have just finished the perusal of your novel, “The Dancing
Feather,” and must say it has greatly interested me, and especially my aunt,
to whom I read it aloud. But we are both equally at fault about one of
your chief characters; and taking cover under an anonymous signature, I
have resolved to write to you to know all about it. The difficulty (and
who can bear a mystery, especially at the end of a novel, where all
mysteries ought to be cleared up?) I want to have explained is this:—
Aunt says the buccanneer Captain was Morris Græme, and I am supported
by two cousins of mine in the opinion that it was Carleton; and I think I
shall show you, Mr. Author, that you have made a mistake; for the following
conversation occurs in the fifth chapter between Hayward and Morris
Græme:

` “—Recent events have confirmed my suspicions that you are a—”

“What?” demanded Græme in a slow tone.

“Nay—I may be wrong. But I firmly believe I saw you one of the
foremost in a party of freebooters who boarded and robbed the brig in which
I came passenger.”

Morris Græme pleasantly smiled at this charge, twirled his mustache and
laughed aloud.

“Truly, Hayward, you have a good memory. I was not there, nor could
you have seen me therefore.” '

This settles the question here. But in the last chapter comes the difficulty!
In this are these words from the lips of “Morris Græme,” when he
surprises Blanche on the shore at Colonel Powel's country seat—

` “—But you (to Blanche) whose name I have breathed when my
thoughts were purest, pardon me the insult that I dared to offer on our former
meeting, and pray for me when I am gone.” '

Now, Mr. Author, if Morris Græme was the “captain,” how is it that
you have made him say, with the evident intention that the reader should
receive it as the fact, that he was not there? If Morris Græme was the
leader, where was Carleton—who hovers like a mist among the scenes;
indistinct, and hardly a character of the novel, and yet, the pirate chief?—
Either Morris Græme and Carleton were one and the same person, under
two names, which I cannot believe, (though my brother Tom does, and insists
upon it,) or in the last chapter you meant to have written “Carleton”
instead of “Morris Græme,” and made the former the hero of the interview
with Blanche. Tell me if this is not the true state of the matter,
and that you very unpardonably and carelessly forgot the plot of your own
story, and left your “intelligent” readers in as great a mist as you have left
Carleton. You may reply by a line in Mr. Clapp's Evening Gazette, which
my uncle takes, or through the Post Office, to

THE AUTHOR'S REPLY THROUGH THE POST OFFICE.

Miss —; for such the style and character of your letter, as well
as the graceful penmanship betray you, I acknowledge the honor of receiving
your inquisitorial missile, duly by post, and take pleasure in replying
to it. I must confess myself guilty of a slip of the pen, and throw
myself upon the clemency of the fair tribunal before which I find myself
arraigned. Carleton is a real character. His outline was only sketched
when I altered the frame-work of my story, to reduce it to the size desired
by its publisher. If the original plan had been carried out, Carlton
would have come forth in bold relief from his “misty indistinctness,” and
been the hero of the novel. But as ten chapters were quite too confined
a space for two heroes to figure in, I resolved quietly to drop him and make
his Lieutenant, Morris Græme, my chief character. But some of the chapters
had already been printed with Carleton a principal character. I therefore
was under the necessity of alluding to him occasionally lest some
reader, as observing and critical as you have proved yourself to have been,
should accuse me of forgetting a personage of my story (for my readers
were not in the secret') My error was, I perceive, and which has given
rise to the difficulty to which I owe the honor of this correspondence, in
quite forgetting at the “winding up” that such a “misty” personage as
Carleton had been introduced, and referring his acts to Morris Græme! If
Carleton's name had taken the place of Morris Græme's in the text, the mystery
you speak of would not have occurred: nor would the honor of receiving
your note, now have been mine to acknowledge! If I should one day de
cide on publishing a Sequel to “The Dancing Feather,” be assurred
that neither Carleton nor Blanch Hillary, the true hero and heroine of that
novel in its original form! shall be forgotten; nor the subsequent career of
Morris Græme (whom I should still, perhaps, make the hero;) for the supposition
with which a clever friend of mine interpolated, unknown to me,
the last paragraph but one in that print, that the Dancing Feather with her
Captain and Lieutenants had foundered in the Gulf of Mexico, turns out
to have been incorrect; the vessel in question proving to have been a Carthagenian
Cruiser, on board which Red Fred had shipped. The career of
the Dancing Feather, and with her, of Carleton and Morris Græme, from
the night of her bird-like flight from the cove is fully known to me and
may one day afford material for a second Tale, in which rest assured, fair
questioner, I shall take pleasure in explaining the difficulties with which
you have charged me, touching the first story. In the meanwhile I have
the honor to be, very sincerely

In fulfilment of the intention hinted at in the above letter, we
now beg leave to offer to the readers of “The Dancing Feather”
“A Sequel” to that novel, in which the original plan is carried
out; though with certain alterations in the construction, as the introduction
of new characters and new scenes have rendered necessary.