It is verily more difficult to write a good prefacefor a book than to write the book itself.We don’t mind telling the reader, very confidentially,that this is not, by any means, our firsteffort at a preface for this work: and we earnestlyhope that the public will not pronouncethis ninth one so stupid as we deemed the eightpreceding ones that we tore up.
It will be perceived that our hero bears thehistoric name of John Smith. Original old JohnSmith, the Virginia settler, met with manyadventures—some of them funny and othersnot so funny—among the latter was the affairwith Miss Pocahontas and her stern old parent:and we claim, for our own John Smith, as manyadventures as his illustrious namesake—someof them quite as funny and others funnier.
Nothing in this narrative of real incidents isat all calculated to reflect on the excellentcharacter of Mr. Smith: and this is because weesteem him very highly and not from any dreadof the law; for John Smith is so multitudinous,that one could handle the name with impunity,and not incur any risk of prosecution for libel.What would a court say to an action against awrite