Preface
_ AUTHOR‘S PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
When authors attempt to explain such of their works as should explain themselves, it makes the case no better that they can say they do it on express invitation. And yet, though I think so, I am about to give some little account of two stories of mine which are connected together,--"Off the Skelligs," and "Fated to be Free."
I am told that they are peculiar； and I feel that they must be so, for most stories of human life are, or at least aim at being, works of art,--selections of interesting portions of life, and fitting incidents, put together and presented as a picture is； and I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a piece of nature. I have attempted to beguile my readers into something like a sense of reality； to make them fancy that they were reading the unskillful chronicle of things that really occurred, rather than some invented story as interesting as I knew how to make it.
It seemed to me difficul

......
全部内容，请购买此书。