Preface
_ It has become the fashion among novelists to introduce their
hero in knee pants, their heroine in pinafore and pigtails.
Time was when we were rushed up to a stalwart young man of
twenty-four, who was presented as the pivot about whom the
plot would revolve. Now we are led, protesting, up to a
grubby urchin of five and are invited to watch him through
twenty years of intimate minutiae. In extreme cases we have
been obliged to witness his evolution from swaddling clothes
to dresses, from dresses to shorts (he is so often English),
from shorts to Etons.
The thrill we get for our pains is when, at twenty-five, he
jumps over the traces and marries the young lady we met in
her cradle on page two. The process is known as a
psychological study. A publisher‘s note on page five
hundred and seventy-three assures us that the author is now
at work on Volume Two, dealing with the hero‘s adult life.
A third volume will present his pleasing senility. The
whole

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