INTRODUCTION



tion I, for the most part, become satisfied that I
have been treated quite as well as I deserve, and
I frankly affirm that if I had to review a basket-
ful of books every week, it would have to be a
much better book than I can write which I would
not condemn to perpetual flame.
  With some of my acquaintances on the other
side of the water, the relation of author and
publisher has been not unlike that of the pit and
the orchestra in the old Dublin theatre, when
in a general row one friend is said to have called
to another, who was about to fling the "trom-
bone" out of a window, not to waste him, but
to kill a fiddler with him.
  My own relation with the publisher class there
has not been exceptional. The first edition of
"In Ole Virginia" there appeared with a flam-
ing picture of "Marse Chan" in a Federal uni-
form, clasping in his arms the Union flag: a
situation not wholly borne out by the story.
  In this country my personal experience has
been quite different. According to Sir Peter
Teazle, "We live in a damned wicked world,
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