Thankfully accepting the assistance
rendered to me by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, by Mrs. H. M. Gordon, and by
Surgeon-General Gordon, C.B., I have borne in mind (as they have borne
in mind) the value of temperate advocacy to a good cause.

With this, your servant withdraws, and leaves you to the story.

II. TO READERS IN PARTICULAR.

If you are numbered among those good friends of ours, who are especially
capable of understanding us and sympathising with us, be pleased to
accept the expression of our gratitude, and to pass over the lines that
follow.

But if you open our books with a mind soured by distrust; if you
habitually anticipate inexcusable ignorance where the course of the
story happens to turn on matters of fact; it is you, Sir or Madam, whom
I now want.

Not to dispute with you--far from it! I own with sorrow that your
severity does occasionally encounter us on assailable ground. But there
are exceptions, even to the stiffest rules. Some of us are not guilty
of wilful carelessness: some of us apply to competent authority, when
we write on subjects beyond the range of our own experience. Having thus
far ventured to speak for my colleagues, you will conclude that I am
paving the way for speaking next of myself. As our cousins in the United
States say--that is so.

In the following pages, there are allusions to medical practice at the
bedside; leading in due course to physiological questions which connect
themselves with the main interest of the novel. In traversing this
delicate ground, you have not been forgotten. Before the manuscript went
to the printer, it was submitted for correction to an eminent London
surgeon, whose experience extends over a period of forty years.

Again: a supposed discovery in connection with brain disease, which
occupies a place of importance, is not (as you may suspect) the
fantastic product of the author's imagination. Finding his
materials everywhere, he has even contrived to make use of Professor
Ferrier--writing on the "Localisation of Cerebral Disease," and closing
a confession of the present result of post-mortem examination of brains
in these words: "We cannot even be sure, whether many of the changes
discovered are the cause or the result of the Disease, or whether the
two are the conjoint results of a common cause." Plenty of elbow room
here for the spirit of discovery.

On becoming acquainted with "Mrs. Gallilee," you will find her
talking--and you will some