Introduction
when you have finished reading one of them you almost feel that you have spent twenty years with these deplorable people, that you have, indeed, ridden with the Mudshire Pack, listened to interminable senseless gabble of the Mudshire drawing rooms, been solemnly cut by Lady Muddiman, or perhaps have entered into the heart of the spiritual storm that shook George Muddiman when he decided that he could no longer contest North Mudshire as a Conservative. Nay, you feel that you have listened to the last sermon preached by the Reverend Ezekiel Mudd at Ebenezer Chapel, Great Mudford, just before that estimable minister threw in his lot with Haeckel. That was the sort of book I detested; and all that was the subject of my Preface to "The House of Souls."
I liked saying all this so much that I went to a publisher and suggested a little book which should be, practically, this preface in an extended form. He assented, and forthwith I set about writing "Dr. Stiggins." It was published and at-
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