been recorded by credible
witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each
other.

This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we
can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.

One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready
for the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the
reader's attention is invited. If the principal personages made their
entrance at once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole
scenery of their surrounding conditions. In point of fact, no matter
how a story is begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief
actors out of any hint the author may have dropped, and provided from
their own resources a locality and a set of outward conditions to
environ these imagined personalities. These are all to be brushed away,
and the actual surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented
as they were, at the risk of detaining the reader a little while from
the events most likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever
was laid was not so big as the nest that held it. If a story were so
interesting that a maiden would rather hear it than listen to the praise
of her own beauty, or a poet would rather read it than recite his
own verses, still it would have to be wrapped in some tissue of
circumstance, or it would lose half its effectiveness.

It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand. Recent
experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating
places and the people who live in them. There are, it may be added,
so many advertisements disguised under the form of stories and other
literary productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion
of being employed by the enterprising proprietors of this or that
celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are
no doubt many persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and
its four chief personages presently to be mentioned. It is to be hoped
that they will not furnish the public with a key to this narrative,
and perhaps bring trouble to the writer of it, as has happened to other
authors. If the real names are a little altered, it need not interfere
with the important facts relating to those who bear them. It might not