[figure description] Introduction xvii.[end figure description]

Friendly Reader:—

Of a truth, we are a great people!—and most
happy am I, Solomon Secondthoughts, Schoolmaster
of the Borough of Quodlibet, that it hath fallen to
my lot, even in my small way, to make known to
you how in our Borough that greatness hath grown
towards its perfect maturity;—feeling persuaded that
Quodlibet therein is but an abstract or miniature portrait
of this nation. Happy am I, although sorely
oppressed with an inward perception of my defective
craft in this most worthy task, that I have been
thought by our Central Committee a fit expounder of
that history wherein is enchrysalized (if I may be
allowed to draw a word, parce detortum, from the
Greek mint) the most veritable essence of that recently
discovered Democratic theory, for distinction
called the Quodlibetarian, which is destined to

[figure description] Introduction xviii.[end figure description]

supplant all other principles in our government and to
render us the most formidable and the most imposing
people upon the terraqueous globe.

How it came to pass that this duty has been committed
to my hands, you shall learn.

In the days of the late Judge Flam, now thirty
years gone by, and long before Quodlibet was, that
very considerate and astute gentleman honored me,
a poor and youthful scholar, with a promotion to the
office of private tutor in his family then residing at
their ancient seat in this neighborhood. It was my
especial duty, in this station, to prepare Master Middleton,
the eldest born, for college; which in three
years of assiduous labor was achieved, much to my
content, and I need not scruple to affirm, no less to
my honor, seeing how notably my pupil has since
figured in high places amongst the salt of the nation.
Far be it from me to take an undue share of desert
for this consummation: it would be disingenuous not
to say that my pupil's liberal endowments at the
hand of Nature herself, rendered my task easy of
success.

By the aid of my early patron the judge, whose
memory will long be embalmed in the unction of my
gratitude, I became, after Master Middleton was
passed from under my care, the head of our district
school, which at first was established in that lowly

[figure description] Introduction xix.[end figure description]

log building under the big chestnut upon the Rumblebottom,
about fifty rods south of Christy M'Curdy's
mill; which tenement is yet to be seen, although in a
melancholy state of desolation, the roof thereof having
been blown away in the famous hurricane of
August 1836, just two years and ten months after the
Removal of the Deposites. This unfortunate event,—
I mean the blowing off of the roof—it was the
mercy of Providence to delay for the term of one
year and a fraction of a month after I had removed
into the new academy which my former pupil, and
now, in lineal succession to his lamented parent the
Judge, my second patron, the Hon. Middleton Flam,
had procured to be erected for my better accommodation
in the Borough of Quodlibet. Had my removal
been delayed, or the hurricane have risen thirteen
months sooner than it did—who shall tell what
mourning it might not have spread through our
county side;—who shall venture to say that Quodlibet
might not have been to-day without a chronicler?

This long inhabiting of mine in these parts has
afforded me all desirable opportunities to note the
growth of the region, and especially to mark out the
beginnings, the progression, and the sudden magnifying
of our Borough: and being a man—I speak it
not vaingloriously—of an inquiring turn, and strongly
gifted, as our people of Quodlibet are pleased to

[figure description] Introduction xx.[end figure description]

allow, with the perfection of setting down my thoughts
in writing; and having that essential requisite of the
historian, an ardent and unquenchable love of my
subject, it has ever been my custom to put into my
tablets whatsoever I have deemed noteworthy in the
events and opinions of my day, accompanied by such
reflections thereon as my subject might be found to
invite. Some of these memorabilia, with discourses
pertinent to the same, have I from time to time, distrustfully
and with the proper timidity of authorship,
ventured to contribute to our newspaper, and thereby
has my secret vanity been regaled by seeing myself
in print. By what token, I have not yet ascertained,
but these lucubrations of mine were not long ago
discovered to our “Grand Central Committee of Unflinching
New Light Quodlibetarian Democrats,”
who have been charged with the arduous duty of
maintaining the integrity of the Party in the present
alarming crisis, and of promoting, by all means in
their power, the indefeasible, unquestionable and perpetual
right of succession to the Presidential Chair,
claimed by and asserted for the candidate of the great,
unterrified, New Democratic school of patriotic defenders
of the spoils. This Central Committee now
hold their sessions weekly in Quodlibet—and having
discovered my hand in the lucubrations to which I
have alluded above, they have been pleased to

[figure description] Introduction xxi.[end figure description]

express a favorable opinion thereon; and, as a sequence
thereto, it has occurred to them to fancy that my poor
labors being duly given to the compiling of such a
history, as my tablets might afford, of the rise and
progress of the New Democratic principle in Quodlibet,
the same would greatly redound to the advantage
of the cause in the present great struggle. Acting
upon this suggestion, the Grand Central Committee
have honored me with a request to throw into such
shape as I might deem best, these scattered records of
opinion and chronicles of fact, whereof I was supposed
to have a rich magazine.

Readily and cheerfully have I acceded to this
request; and with the more relish, as I shall thus be
furnished with an authentic occasion to present to
the world the many valuable thoughts and eloquent
utterings of my late distinguished pupil and now
beneficent patron the Hon. Middleton Flam, Esq.,
long a representative of this Borough and the adjacent
district in the Congress of the United States.

I pretend to no greater merit in this execution of
my task than what an impartial spirit of investigation,
a long acquaintance with persons of every degree
connected with this history, an apt judgment in discriminating
between opinions, a most faithful and
abundant memory, a careful store of documentary
evidence, an unalterable devotion to the great

[figure description] Introduction xxii.[end figure description]

principles of Quodlibetarian Democracy, and, for the expounding
of all, a lucid and felicitous style, may allow
me to claim as the chronicler of this Borough.

The better to assure you, my friendly reader, that,
in temper and condition, I may demand somewhat of
the confidence due to the character of a dispassionate
commentator on the times, I would have you understand
that I am now on the shady side of sixty, unmarried,
and in possession of an easy revenue of four
hundred dollars per annum, which is voted to me by
our commissioners, for instructing in their rudiments,
thirty-seven children of both sexes: that I have a
plate at the table of my patron, the Hon. Middleton
Flam my former pupil, every Sunday at dinner; and
that he, being aware for some time past of my purpose
to treasure up his remarkable sayings has, with
a generous freedom, often repeated to me many opinions
which otherwise would have been irretrievably
lost. Moreover, since I am now brought before the
public under circumstances in which reserve on my
part would be no better than affectation, I would
also advertise my indulgent reader of the fact, that I
belong to the Quodlibetarian New Light Club, whereof
I sometime officiated as Secretary, and which club
generally meets on Saturday night at Ferret's: that
the members of the same, noting my staidness of deportment
and the careful deliberation with which I

[figure description] Introduction xxiii.[end figure description]

guard myself in the utterance of any discourse, do
frequent honor to the temperance of my judgment
by making me the arbiter of such casual controversies
as arise therein, touching the true import and
application of the principles of our New Light Democracy:
and—if I run no risk of being charged
with offering a trivial evidence of the reputation I
have earned in the club—I would also mention, that
some of our light wags have gone so far—facetiously
and with a commendable good nature, knowing that
I would not take it ill, as more peevish men might,
in their jocular pleasantry—as to call me, in allusion
to my natural sedateness, Sober Secondthoughts—
the rogues!

And now, amiable and considerate reader, you
have “ab imo pectore” my honest avouch for what I
propose to lay before you, and a plain confession of
my weaknesses. I come with a clean breast to the
confessional. We shall have a frugal banquet of it,
but the fruits, I make bold to promise, shall be wholesome
and of the best. Now turn we to it in good
earnest. If this little chronicle—for my book shall
not be overgrown and apoplectic, but rather, as you
shall find it, “garrulous and thin”—do not bring you
to a profound sense of the value of this Amaranth of
Republicanism, the New Light Quodlibetarian Democracy,
then say it to my teeth, there is no virtue in

[figure description] Introduction xxiv.[end figure description]

Sober Secondthoughts.—Go thy ways—“The wise
man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in
darkness.”