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. They tell me not to be frightened about
it,--to begin as dull as I like, and that I shall warm up, by-and-by, as
old _Dutchman_ used to, who could hardly put one leg before the other
when he started, but, after a while, got so limbered and straightened
out by his work, that he dropped down into the forties, and, I think
they say, into the thirties. _L'appetit vient en mangeant_, one of them
said who talks French,--which, you know, means, that eating makes one
hungry. I remember, when I sat down to that last book of mine, which you
may perhaps have read, although I had the facts of the story, of course,
all in my head, it seemed to me that I should never have the patience
to tell them all; and yet, before I was through, I got so full of the
scenes and characters I was talking about, that I had to bolt my door
and lay in an extra bandanna, before I could trust myself to put my
recollections and thoughts on paper. You don't expect a locomotive is
going to start off with a train of thirty or forty thousand passengers,
without straining a little,--do you? That isn't the way; but this is.
_Puff!_ The wheels begin to turn, but very slowly. Papas hold up their
little Johnnys to the car-windows to be kissed. _Puff----Puff!_ People
shake hands from the platform to the cars, walking along by their side.
_Puff--puff--puff!_ Now, then, Ma'am! pass out that