THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER.
(Frontispiece. See page 40.)
The End of the World.
A LOVE STORY,
BY
EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," ETC.
WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS.
1872
PREFACE.
[IN THE POTENTIAL MOOD.]
It is the pretty unanimous conclusion of book-writers thatprefaces are most unnecessary and useless prependages, since nobodyreads them. And it is the pretty unanimous practice of book-writersto continue to write them with such pains and elaborateness aswould indicate a belief that the success of a book depends upon thefavorable prejudice begotten of u graceful preface. My principalembarrassment is that it is not customary for a book to have morethan one. How then shall I choose between the half-dozen letters ofintroduction I might give my story, each better and worse on manyaccounts than either of the others? I am rather inclined to adoptthe following, which might for some reasons be styled the
PREFACE SENTIMENTAL.
Perhaps no writer not infatuated with conceit, can send out abook full of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth,are his own, without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate ofhis offspring. And there are few prefaces which do not in some waybetray this nervousness. I confess to a respect for even theprefatory doggerel of good Tinker Bunyan--a respect for hispaternal tenderness toward his book, not at all for his villainousrhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white handkerchiefs of mychildren waving an adieu as they sailed away from me, a profoundanxiety seized me. So now, as I part company with August and Julia,with my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with themud-clerk on the Iatan, and the shaggy lord of Shady-Hollow Castle,and the rest, that have watched with me of nights and crossed theferry with me twice a day for half a year--even now, as I see themwaving me adieu with their red silk and "yaller" cotton"hand-kerchers," I know how many rocks of misunderstanding andcriticism and how many shoals of damning faint praise are beforethem, and my heart is full of misgiving.
--But it will never do to have misgivings in a preface. Howoften have publishers told me this! Ah! if I could write with halfthe heart and hope my publishers evince in their advertisements,where they talk about "front rank" and "great American story" andall that, it would doubtless be better for the book, providedanybody would read the preface or believe it when they had read it.But at any rate let us not have a preface in the minor key.
A philosophical friend of mine, who is addicted to Carlyle, hasrecommended that I try the following, which he calls
THE HIGH PHILOSOPHICAL PREFACE.
Why should I try to forestall the Verdict? Is it notforeordained in the very nature of a Book and the Constitution ofthe Reader that a certain very Definite Number of Readers willmisunderstand and dislike a given Book? And that another veryDefinite Number will understand it and dislike it none the less?And that still a third class, also definitely fixed in the EternalNature of Things, will misunderstand and like it, and, what ismore, like it only because of their misunderstanding?