Excerpt from Between Times: Or, Tales, Sketches, and Poems, Written in the Leisure Moments of a Busy Life MY publisher asks me whether I want a preface to this book, a courteous, and doubtless a meces sary question, which plunges me into a most uncomfortable state of mental indecision; the trouble being, not so much whether a preface should be written, as what it should contain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.