PREFACE.
It is a very common practice among book-makers of the present day, to entertain their readers with a preface, setting forth with coquettish diffidence, not the merits, but the demerits of their productions. If they believed their own professions, and their diffidence were anything but feigned, it is obvious they would never have entered the list of authors, and
"done their best
To make as much waste-paper as the rest."
It is not my intention to follow their example; but in order to secure my readers as much as possible against the chances of disappointment, I at once assure them most frankly, that the following pages have no pretension to literary fame, but were hastily thrown together during my rambles, and have since been deprived (by my arduous occupation as a merchant in Sidney) of whatever improvement a careful revision might have enabled me to effect.
