HOW MR. If I have not asked your permission to dedicate this volume to you, it is because I would not involve you in the responsibility of any opinions even so light a production may contain, nor seek to cover by a great name the sentiment and views of a very humble one. I cannot, however, deny myself the pleasure of inscribing to you a book to which I have given much thought and labor,—a testimony of the deep and sincere affection of one who has no higher pride than in the honor of your friendship.
When I had made my arrangement with my publishers for this new story, I was not sorry for many reasons to place the scene of it in Ireland. I was not then, still less am I now, disposed to argue the point with my censor, and show that there is a very wide difference between the persons who move in the polite world, with a very questionable morality, and those patented adventurers whose daily existence is the product of daily address.
The more one sees of life, the more is he struck by the fact that the mass of mankind is rarely very good or very bad, that the business of life is carried on with mixed motives; the best people being those who are least selfish, and the worst being little other than those who seek their own objects with slight regard for the consequences to others, and even less scruple as to the means.
Any uniformity in good or evil would be the deathblow to that genteel comedy which goes on around us, and whose highest interest very often centres in the surprises we give ourselves by unexpected lines of action and unlooked-for impulses.
As this strange drama unfolded itself before me, it had become a passion with me to watch the actors, and speculate on what they might do.
