PREFACE. THE volume now offered to the public is a first attempt at collecting and classing the author's numerous contributions to various periodicals. A far greater diversity of subjects might have been chosen; but, as utility is one of the essential requisites of popular fiction, at the present day, a selection has been made from those tales only which have a decided practical tendency, or a direct bearing upon domestic life. If these sketches receive the same favor from the general reader that they met with in the pages of the magazines, they may, at some future time, be followed by a second series. That they may not be found to resemble inferior garden flowers, which though admitted for the sake of variety into a rich bouquet, are worthless in themselves, is a hope which a writer so long conversant with the public may perhaps be allowed to indulge, without incurring the charge of arrogance or assumption. BROOKLYN, May 8, 1848. |