NEW YORK: 

1858. 

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

IF the reader will but pay attention to what I have written in this
great work, it will be found that I have taken an unwarrantable
liberty with his good taste; that is to say, I have so far deviated
from that stereotyped rule-so strictly observed by all our great
authors-as to make my hero, who is what is curiously enough called a
"Yankee Character," speak tolerably good English, instead of vulgar
slang.  In truth, so closely do "our great writers" adhere to this
rule of depicting the eccentric American as a lean, scraggy
individual, dressed most outlandishly, making splinters of the
king's English, while drawling it with offensive nasal sounds, and
violating the rules of common politeness in whatever he does, that
when he goes abroad the foreigner is surprised to find him a
tolerably well polished gentleman, and indeed not unfrequently