The author thinks he shall be misapprehended about this or that matter, that his well-meant expressions will probably be invidiously interpreted by those whom he looks upon as prejudiced critics, and if he deals with living questions that he will be attacked as a destructive by the conservatives and reproached for his timidity by the noisier radicals.

The first Preface, therefore, is likely to be the weakest part of a work containing the thoughts of an honest writer.
After a time the writer has cooled down from his excitement,--has got over his apprehensions, is pleased to find that his book is still read, and that he must write a new Preface.

He comes smiling to his task.

How many things have explained themselves in the ten or twenty or thirty years since he came before his untried public in those almost plaintive paragraphs in which he introduced himself to his readers,--for the Preface writer, no matter how fierce a combatant he may prove, comes on to the stage with his shield on his right arm and his sword in his left hand.
The Professor at the Breakfast-Table came out in the "Atlantic Monthly" and introduced itself without any formal Preface.

A quarter of a century later the Preface of 1882, which the reader has just had laid before him, was written.