antity in the news problem of the day from this estimate,
and for reasons as varied as obvious. We shall not weary the reader with a
statement of the latter, nor a recitative of the conditions upon which
they are or may have been based. It is enough that we know that no
consecutive nor reliable history of the Order could have been written at
an earlier period; and even at this date, so broken and fragmentary are
those passages referring to its active career, compiled during months of
arduous labor, that the author has been necessitated to group them in a
series of historical sketches, or pen-pictures, and in treating the
subject to adopt the style of the romancist, rather than that of the
historian. He flatters himself, however, that while the reliability of his
historical information is not impaired by this method, that the work will
thereby be rendered more attractive to a large class of readers; and, on
the other hand, as to facts connected with the _morale_ of the weird
subject, he is not hampered by these considerations, but is enabled to
present them in such a concise form, and as sententiously as regards
style, as their share of the task's importance renders peremptory.

From the moment that the resolution to compose these sketches in the
interest of the reading public became fixed in the author's mind, he has
been in constant communication with individuals who were not only
influential leaders of the secret movement, but held high official rank
under it; so that the authenticity of his statements affecting its
_regime_ is placed so far beyond question that the reader is at liberty to
take the latter as _ex cathedra_ utterances of this singularly reticent
body. Should those passages which are occupied with the more exciting
events of K. K. K. history be calculated to awaken _sensation_ in the
public breast, it is a _contretemps_ from which the author begs to excuse
himself in the light of the same admission, adding, moreover, that he has
availed himself of those examples which have gone before him in this
department of literature, and reserved his art-flourishes for less
susceptible divisions of the theme.

The intelligent reader will see no politics, nor evidence of political
bias in the pages of this volume, if he will do the author the simple
fairness of its thorough examination. If in addressing his audience from
the _status in quo_, to which the Ku-Klux troubles were referred in their
origin and bloody caree