Excerpt from Other Days: Recollections of Rural England and Old Virginia, 1860-1880
None of the conventional apologies for a reminiscent volume, fortunately for the writer, are, in this case, called for. Neither the importunities of friends nor the problematical edi fication of descendants have anything to say to these pages. For they were written solely at the instigation and request of my publishers, who have kindly allowed me to absolve myself from any egotistic intention by dis closing the fact here. Furthermore, they were good enough to read the proof-sheets through, blue pencil in hand, at my request; and in declining to use the latter, I only hope they were discreet. My aim was to be as impersonal as the nature of the book, which is, for the most part, frankly and intentionally light, allowed. I am not at all sure that I have succeeded. But, in any case, I fancy that the scenes and characters recalled in these pages are somewhat out of the common run dealt with in books of this particular kind, which seem concerned, for the most part, with town and city life. Fortunately, too, the period covered by them closes long before the habit of writing books fell upon the author. So all temptation to drop into conventional and somewhat over beaten paths, and perhaps a worse form of egotism, is happily removed.
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