The Project Gutenberg EBook of The End Of The World, by Edward Eggleston

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Title: The End Of The World
A Love Story

Author: Edward Eggleston

Release Date: November 15, 2004 [EBook #14051]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: THE BACKWOODS PHILOSOPHER
_(Frontispiece. See page 40.)_]

The End of the World.

A LOVE STORY,

BY

EDWARD EGGLESTON

AUTHOR OF "THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER," ETC.

WITH THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS.

1872

PREFACE.

[IN THE POTENTIAL MOOD.]

It is the pretty unanimous conclusion of book-writers that prefaces are
most unnecessary and useless prependages, since nobody reads them. And
it is the pretty unanimous practice of book-writers to continue to write
them with such pains and elaborateness as would indicate a belief that
the success of a book depends upon the favorable prejudice begotten of u
graceful preface. My principal embarrassment is that it is not customary
for a book to have more than one. How then shall I choose between the
half-dozen letters of introduction I might give my story, each better
and worse on many accounts than either of the others? I am rather
inclined to adopt the following, which might for some reasons be
styled the

PREFACE SENTIMENTAL.

Perhaps no writer not infatuated with conceit, can send out a book full
of thought and feeling which, whatever they may be worth, are his own,
without a parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And
there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray this nervousness.
I confess to a respect for even the prefatory doggerel of good Tinker
Bunyan--a respect for his paternal tenderness toward his book, not at
all for his villainous rhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white
handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from
me, a profound anxiety seized me. So now, as I part company with August
and Julia, with my beloved Jonas and my much-respected Cynthy Ann, with
the mud-clerk on the Iatan, an