The narratives composing this book are literally true stories of crime.
In a majority of the cases the author conducted the prosecutions
himself, and therefore may claim to have a personal knowledge of that
whereof he speaks. While no confidence has been abused, no essential
facts have been omitted, distorted, or colored, and the accounts
themselves, being all matters of public record, may be easily verified.
The scenes recorded here are not literature but history, and the
characters who figure in them are not puppets of the imagination, but
men and women who lived and schemed, laughed, sinned and suffered, and
paid the price when the time came, most of them, without flinching. A
few of those who read these pages may profit perhaps by their example;
others may gain somewhat in their knowledge of life and human nature;
but all will agree that there are books in the running brooks, even if
the streams be turbid, and sermons in stones, though these be the hearts
of men. If in some instances the narratives savor in treatment more of
fiction than of fact, the writer must plead guilty to having fallen
under the spell of the romance of his subject, and he proffers the
excuse that, whereas such tales have lost nothing in accuracy, they may
have gained in the truth of their final impression.