These stories have but one purpose--to give pleasure; and they have been
made into a book at the requests of those I have fortunately pleased. It
is, therefore, to such friends of my writing that they are addressed and
dedicated. However, this is not an effort to avoid my responsibility:
but to whom? Not to critics, not middlemen, nor the Academies of which
I am so reprehensibly ignorant; not, certainly, to my neighbor. They
brought me, in times of varying difficulty, food; and for that excellent
reason I am forced to conclude that, then as now, I am responsible to my
grocer.