Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. There is a something almost indecent, as it were, in setting forth all a man thinks and feels, without an explanation or at the least a prelude of some sort. A fencing master goes through the salute, a jockey takes a preliminary canter, even divines resort to incantations of some kind or other before they fall a-preaching, and when a speaker starts with Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen and the farrago that goes to herald forth a speech, that is his preface.

Now, preludes, prefaces and explanations are of the nature of a stalking horse, by means of which writers may approach their readers on their blind side. If a man writes a treatise upon aviation, or astronomy, he naturally has no false shame, for no one writes upon such matters without full knowledge, and it is ten to one he knows a hundred times more of them than does the man who reads.

There is a something almost indecent, as it were, in setting forth all a man thinks and feels, without an explanation or at the least a prelude of some sort. A fencing master goes through the salute, a jockey takes a preliminary canter, even divines resort to incantations of some kind or other before they fall a-preaching, and when a speaker starts with "Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen" and the farrago that goes to herald forth a speech, that is his preface.Now, preludes, prefaces and explanations are of the nature of a stalking horse, by means of which writers may approach their readers on their blind side. If a man writes a treatise upon aviation, or astronomy, he naturally has no false shame, for no one writes upon such matters without full knowledge, and it is ten to one he knows a hundred times more of them than does the man who reads.