Preface
_ 1871.
AUTHOR OF "UNCLE TOM‘S CABIN," "THE MINISTER‘S WOOING," ETC.
"Come, then, the colors and the ground prepare；
Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air；
Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute."
POPE.
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 personae_, and plot and plan, together with

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