[figure description] Preface.[end figure description]

These Sketches, which I have ventured to call Tales, drawn partly from memories
of incidents of old times, but mostly from imagination, were written for the
sake of my own entertainment, in the evenings when I had nothing else to do.
And now I am going to let them be published in a little book, having been persuaded,
perhaps too easily, that they may amuse others, enough at least to have me
excused both for the writing and the publishing. I know very well that such
words as these, which are meant for a Preface, may be regarded rather as an
apology. Let it be so; and if it be thought not sufficient, even as such, it is as
much, I insist, as ought to be expected from a man of my age.