Of one thing I am sure:--if my pictures are fair, worthy, and hearty,
you _must_ see it in the reading; but if they are forced and hard, no
amount of kindness can make you feel their truth, as I want them felt.
I make no self-praise out of this: if feeling has been honestly set
down, it is only in virtue of a native impulse, over which I have
altogether too little control, but if it is set down badly, I have
wronged Nature, and (as Nature is kind) I have wronged myself.
A great many inquisitive people will, I do not doubt, be asking, after
all this prelude, if my pictures are true pictures? The question--the
courteous reader will allow me to say--is an impertinent one. It is but
a shabby truth that wants an author's affidavit to make it trustworthy.
I shall not help my story by any such poor support. If there are not
enough elements of truth, honesty, and nature in my pictures to make
them believed, they shall have no oath of mine to bolster them up.
I have been a sufferer in this way before now; and a little book that I
had the whim to publish a year since, has been set down by many as an
arrant piece of imposture. Claiming sympathy as a Bachelor, I have been
recklessly set down as a cold, undeserving man of family! My story of
troubles and loves has been sneered at as the sheerest gammon.
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