IN expressing my acknowledgments for the favorable reception accorded to
the previous editions of this story, I may take the present opportunity
of adverting to one of the characters, not alluded to in the Letter of
Dedication. The German oculist--"Herr Grosse"--has impressed himself so
strongly as a real personage on the minds of some of my readers afflicted
with blindness, or suffering from diseases of the eye, that I have
received several written applications requesting me to communicate his
present address to patients desirous of consulting him! Sincerely
appreciating the testimony thus rendered to the truth of this little
study of character, I have been obliged to acknowledge to my
correspondents--and I may as well repeat it here--that Herr Grosse has no
(individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in
this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn from my
general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a
mistake in Art to limit the delineation of character in fiction to a
literary portrait taken from any one "sitter." The result of this process
is generally (to my mind) to produce a caricature instead of a character.