PREFACE.
MY Dear Reader, — This story is not to be a novel,
as the world understands the word; and we tell
you so beforehand, lest you be in ill-humor by not finding
what you expected. For if you have been told that
your dinner is to be salmon and green pease, and made
up your mind to that bill of fare, and then, on coming
to the table, find that it is beefsteak and tomatoes,
you may be out of sorts; not because beefsteak and
tomatoes are not respectable viands, but because they
are not what you have made up your mind to enjoy.
Now, a novel, in our days, is a three-story affair, —
a complicated, complex, multiform composition, requiring
no end of scenery and dramatis personœ, and plot
and plan, together with trap-doors, pit-falls, wonderful
escapes and thrilling dangers; and the scenes transport
one all over the earth, — to England, Italy, Switzerland,
Japan, and Kamtschatka. But this is a little commonplace
history, all about one man and one woman, living
straight along in one little prosaic town in New England.
It is, moreover, a story with a moral; and for
fear that you shouldn't find out exactly what the moral
is, we shall adopt the plan of the painter who wrote
under his pictures, “This is a bear,” and “This is a
turtle-dove.” We shall tell you in the proper time
succinctly just what the moral is, and send you off
edified as if you had been hearing a sermon. So please
to call this little sketch a parable, and wait for the
exposition thereof.
