to weary
me. But the clever people who have something interesting to say, seem,
so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant
than chance. For every story which I propose including in the present
collection, excepting one, I have been indebted, in the first instance,
to the capricious influence of the same chance. Something my sitter has
seen about me, something I have remarked in my sitter, or in the room in
which I take the likeness, or in the neighborhood through which I pass
on my way to work, has suggested the necessary association, or has
started the right train of recollections, and then the story appeared
to begin of its own accord. Occasionally the most casual notice, on
my part, of some very unpromising object has smoothed the way for the
relation of a long and interesting narrative. I first heard one of the
most dramatic of the stories that will be presented in this book, merely
through being carelessly inquisitive to know the history of a stuffed
poodle-dog.

It is thus not without reason that I lay some stress on the
desirableness of prefacing each one of the following narratives by a
brief account of the curious manner in which I became possessed of it.
As to my capacity for repeating these stories correctly, I can answer
for it that my memory may be trusted. I may claim it as a merit, because
it is after all a mechanical one, that I forget nothing, and that I can
call long-passed conversations and events as readily to my recollection
as if they had happened but a few weeks ago. Of two things at least I
feel tolerably certain beforehand, in meditating over the contents of
this book: First, that I can repeat correctly all that I have heard;
and, secondly, that I have never missed anything worth hearing when my
sitters were addressing me on an interesting subject. Although I cannot
take the lead in talking while I am engaged in painting, I can listen
while others speak, and work all the better for it.

So much in the way of general preface to the pages for which I am about
to ask the reader's attention. Let me now advance to particulars, and
describe how I came to hear the first story in the present collection. I
begin with it because it is the story that I have oftenest "rehearsed,"
to borrow a phrase from the stage. Wherever I go, I am sooner or later
sure to tell it. Only last night, I was persuaded into repeating it once
more by the inhabitants of the farmhouse in which I am now sta