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I am aware that the preface of a book is usually the last portion of it
which is read--if read it is--and, therefore, of little import; and I
have, consequently, deliberated somewhat whether I would encumber the
following tales with a prefix or not, but perhaps it is due to the
reader to say (what, however, is apparent enough in some of the tales
themselves) that the experiences and observations therein narrated, are
not all personally mine; that some of them have, at different times,
been detailed to me by old and tried personal friends, of deep
knowledge of the world, and of extreme sagacity, and that I have
presented them here, together with my own, in special instances, as
being equally illustrative with mine of subtle human nature.
What is specifically my own in these tales, and what little I am
indebted for to my good friends, I leave to such as may be curious, to
determine for themselves. It must now suffice them (for in the
experiment of "book-making" I have nearly lost my best patience--amidst
its multiplicity of perplexities; its "proof-reading," the awful
blunders of the printers, the "bungling" of the mails, the calls for
"more copy" at inopportune moments, etc., etc.)--it must suffice them,
I repeat, simply to know, that whatever experiences here recited are
not my own, are equally authentic with mine, and, in my judgment, add
to the merits of "Knots Untied" (if merits it has) rather than detract
therefrom. So, since it cannot be that the reader will peruse my book
for my sake, but for the book's sake and for his own, let him thank me
for whatever "clearer light" I have accepted from others for his
benefit.
It was only at the instance--I might properly say by the repeated
importunity--of certain partial friends of mine, that I was first
induced to put into readable form some of the notes of my experiences
and observations, particularly those running through a period of a
dozen years of official life, preceded by a dozen more of a
quasi-official character. I would remark here, that no chronological
order has been observed in the collation of the tales composing "Knots
Untied."
Having, from my early days, been interested with various sociological
problems, it has been my wont to fix in memoranda, of one form or
another, such data as I conceived worthy, as simple statistics or
eccentric facts, bearing upon the great general question of human
suffering and crime, and their causes, and the means of their
depiction, and final extinction also (as I firmly believe) in "the good
time coming," when Science shall have ripened the paltry and distracted
civilization of the present into that enlightenment in which alone the
race should be contented to live,--in which only, in truth, they can be
fully content with existence,--and which the now subject classes could,
if they were wise enough to know their rights and their power, command
in concert, for themselves, and the ruling classes as well.
And these partial friends of mine have thought I might do some good,
and that I ought to, however little it may prove, to the cause of human
happiness,--in the intent thereby of enlarging the security of the
innocent from the machinations of the depraved,--by the detail of
certain wily "offences against the law and good order of society,"
while demonstrating therein how sure of final discovery and punishment
are the criminally vicious, however crafty and subtle, in these days,
when the art of police detection has become almost an exact science.
Authors are sometimes sensitive (I believe), about the reception which
they, "by their works," may meet with at the hands of the public; and
not seldom do they, in more or less ingenious ways, attempt to cajole
their readers, through well-studied prefaces, into a prejudicedly
favorable mood regarding the body of their books. Perhaps mine is a
singularly good fortune, in that my partial and importuning friends
before alluded to, have given me consoling courage to "go forward" and
publish what they are so kind as to be pleased with, by the assurance
that they will take upon themselves, and patiently bear, all the severe
criticism, the curses, the wanton blows, etc., which may be aimed at me
by "hypercritical critics," or by vexed and wrathful readers; while I
shall be left to enjoy, unalloyed, all the "blessings" with which the
rest of the public may be pleased to favor me.
I regarded this as so excellent an expression of human[e] goodness upon
the part of these my friends, that I consented to honor it, by
submission to their will. Hence these tales, in their printed
form,--designed at first to beguile an hour for particular friends in
the reading, as the same had beguiled many long hours for me in the
writing,--and not primarily intended to be put into the form of a book.
If any good to the world accrues from their publication, through the
instruction which they may afford to some, perhaps; or by their
possibly enlarging the scope of the reader's charity for the erring, or
in any way, I shall be gratified; and so (it _is_ but fair in me to add
this, for they are human, and sensitive to the joys which "a good done"
brings)--and so, to repeat, will also be my aforesaid partial, good
friends.