_Few novelists, if any, can have escaped the sprightly idiocy of a
reproach couched in somewhat the following terms:_
_"Aha! I recognized the people in your last book. You can't deceive_
ME! _The minute I came to that part about the old lady feeding the cat,
I saw at once that you meant it for poor Aunt Jane."_
_And also, spoken several semi-tones lower:_
_"All the same, it seems rather a shame to have put poor old_
GRANDPAPA _into a book, now that he's dead."_
_In an endeavour to forestall these intelligent criticisms, I wish to
point out that Philip and Eleanor Stellenthorpe, Miss Melody, Aunt
Clotilde, the Hardinges, etc., merely represent types--that I fear to
be far from extinct--of amateur educationalists._
_There are no individual indictments in_ HUMBUG, _the book
is not an autobiography, and Lily Stellenthorpe is not an attempt at
foisting upon the reader a portrait of the writer as she would fain
have herself considered, and as she is not._