When I saw, the other day, the white handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from me, a profound anxiety seized me.

So now, as I part company with August and Julia, with my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with the mud-clerk on the Iatan, and the shaggy lord of Shady-Hollow Castle, and the rest, that have watched with me of nights and crossed the ferry with me twice a day for half a year--even now, as I see them waving me adieu with their red silk and "yaller" cotton "hand-kerchers," I know how many rocks of misunderstanding and criticism and how many shoals of damning faint praise are before them, and my heart is full of misgiving.
-- But it will never do to have misgivings in a preface.

How often have publishers told me this! Ah! if I could write with half the heart and hope my publishers evince in their advertisements, where they talk about "front rank" and "great American story" and all that, it would doubtless be better for the book, provided anybody 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, has recommended that I try the following, which he calls THE HIGH PHILOSOPHICAL PREFACE.
Why should I try to forestall the Verdict?
Is it not foreordained in the very nature of a Book and the Constitution of the Reader that a certain very Definite Number of Readers will misunderstand and dislike a given Book?
And that another very Definite Number will understand it and dislike it none the less?
And that still a third class, also definitely fixed in the Eternal Nature of Things, will misunderstand and like it, and, what is more, like it only because of their misunderstanding?
And in relation to a true Book, there can not fail to be an Elect Few who understand admiringly and understandingly admire.

Why, then, make bows, write prefaces, attempt to prejudice the Case?
Can I change the Reader?
Will I change the Book?
No?
Then away with Preface! The destiny of the Book is fixed.