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PREFACE

"A PREFACE!" exclaims the reader. "Certainly. Good acquaintanceships are seldom formed without a proper introduction—so a good book is never without a preface.” "True, but why need a preface when the book is but as the moon, brilliant from borrowed light?" "There we join issue. It has lustre of its own. It is not the mere jumblins together of jokes, quips, cranks, and extracts, that, in this enlightened and railway-reading age, will enable a book to pass muster. No, there must be judgment, discretion, and we may say truly, taste, in stringing together the literary and jocular pearls composing books like the present, so as to render the perusal palatable, and something for everyone to be pleased with. Shall we be presumptuous enough to say that we have done this? We won't go quite so far.