I might be willing to relate some
curious matters that have come to my knowledge, arranging them in a
collective form, so that they would probably pass with most readers for
fictitious, and perhaps excite very much the same kind of interest they
would if genuine fictions. I don't remember much about the "last war";
but I suppose both of us may recollect the illumination when peace was
declared in 1815.
Ever yours.
THE PUBLISHERS TO THE AUTHOR.
(Inclosing a check, in advance, for the first number.)
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
Finding myself in possession of certain facts which possess interest
sufficient to warrant their publication, I am led to ask myself whether
I shall put them in the form of a narrative. There are, evidently, two
sides to this question. In the first place, I have a number of friends
who write me letters, and tell me openly to my face, that they want me
to go on writing. It doesn't make much difference to them, they say,
what I write about,--only they want me to keep going. They have got used
to seeing me, in one shape or another,--and I am a kind of habit with
them, like a nap after dinner.
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