University of Virginia Library

TO GEORGE P. PUTNAM.

When I decided to write a brief letter of Dedication
for this book, and thus evade a Preface—since all that
need be said to the reader can be said just as well, if not
better, to the friend—I began to cast about in my mind
for the particular individual willing to stand by my side in
this new literary venture, deserving of all the fleeting compliment
which possible success may give, and too secure,
in the shelter of his own integrity, to be damaged by
whatever condemnation may fall upon the author. While
various cherished names arose, one after the other, the cab
in which I rode and meditated passed down Regent Street
into Waterloo Place, and my eyes fell upon that door,
where, seventeen years ago, I entered for the first time
one dreary March afternoon—entered as a timid, desponding
stranger, and issued thence with the cheer and encouragement
which I owed to your unexpected kindness. The

conditions which I sought are all fulfilled in you. From
that day to this, in all our intercourse, I have found in you
the faithful friend, the man of unblemished honor and unselfish
ambition, to whom the author's interests were never
secondary to his own. According to the poet Campbell,
we should be “natural enemies,” but I dedicate this book
to you as my natural friend.

I am aware how much is required for the construction
of a good work of fiction—how much I venture in entering
upon a field so different from those over which I have
hitherto been ranging. It is, however, the result of ne
sudden whim, no ambition casually provoked. The plan
of the following story has long been familiar to my mind.
I perceived peculiarities of development in American life
which have escaped the notice of novelists, yet which are
strikingly adapted to the purposes of fiction, both in the
originality and occasional grotesqueness of their external
manifestation, and the deeper questions which lie beneath
the surface. I do not, therefore, rest the interest of the
book on its slender plot, but on the fidelity with which it
represents certain types of character and phases of society.
That in it which most resembles caricature is oftenest the
transcript of actual fact, and there are none of the opinions
uttered by the various characters which may not now and
then be heard in almost any country community of the

Northern and Western States. Whether those opinions
are to be commended or condemned, the personages of the
story are alone responsible for them. I beg leave, once
more, to protest against the popular superstition that an
author must necessarily represent himself in one form or
another. I am neither Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Waldo, nor
Seth Wattles.

This is all I have to say. The intelligent reader will
require no further explanation, and you no further assurance
of how steadily and faithfully I am your friend,