Excerpt from Echoes of the Past, Present, and Future: With Other Poems As a head without a heart may be compared to a. Soul without a body, so a book Without a preface may allegorically be said to resemble a ship Without a pilot What a pilot is to a ship, a preface is to a, book 3 and as the former often saves the ship from foundering, so the latter frequently preserves the book from slumbering in neglect on the shelf. 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.