IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ANTICIPATES DISCONTENT ON THE PART OF HIS READER "But come," I imagine some reader complaining, "isn't it high time for something to happen ?" No doubt it is, but what am I to do?
I am no less discontented.

Is it not even more to my interest than to the reader's for something to happen?
Here have I been tramping along since breakfast-time, and now it is late in the afternoon, but never a feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter of her angel's robes have I seen.

It is disheartening, for one naturally expects to find anything we seek a few minutes after starting out to seek it, and I confess that I expected to find my golden mistress within a very few hours of leaving home.

However, had that been the case, there would have been no story, as the novelists say, and I trust, as he goes on, the reader may feel with me that that would have been a pity.

Besides, with that prevision given to an author, I am strongly of opinion that something will happen before long.