re laid before the reader, with some
running criticism by T. James Barescythe, Esquire, the book-noticer of "The
Morning Glory," ("a journal devoted to the Fine Arts and the Amelioration
of all Mankind,") and the type of a certain class which need not be
distinctly specified for recognition. I have endeavored to make the novel
of my literary hero such a one as a young man with fine taste and crude
talent might produce; and I think I have succeeded. It is certainly
sufficiently unfinished.

In drawing the character of Barescythe, the point of my quill may have
pierced a friend; and if you ask, like Ludovico,

"What shall be said of thee?"

I shall answer, like Othello,

"Why, anything:
An honorable murderer, if you will;
For nought I did in hate, but all in honor."

The only audacious thing I have done is the writing of this preface. If
there is anything more stupid than a "preface," it is a book-critic. If
anything _could_ be more stupid than a book-critic, it would be a preface.
But, thank heaven, there is not. In saying this, I refer to a particular
critic; for I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign in such a
wholesale manner those capital good fellows of the press--those _verbal
accoucheurs_ who are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new
genius. Not I. I have

"A fellow-feeling"

and a love for them, which would seem like a bid for their good nature, if
expressed here.

I have put my name on the title-page of this trifle from principle. My
pen-children are all mine, and I cannot think of disowning one, though it
may happen to be born hump-backed. But I beg of you, gentlest of
unfortunate readers, not to take DAISY'S NECKLACE as a serious exponent of
my skill at story-telling. It is _not_ printed at the "urgent request of
numerous friends"--I am so fortunate as not to have many--but a seductive
little argument in the shape of a _cheque_ is the sole cause of its present
form; otherwise, I should be content to let it die an easy death in the
columns of the journal which first had the temerity to publish it. If the
world could always know, as it may in this case, why a book is printed, it
would look with kindlier eyes on dullness bound in muslin. It would say,
with honest Sancho Panza: "Let us not look the gift-horse in the mouth."

When the sunshine of this dear old world has reddened the wine in my
heart--melted down its sparkles to a creamy