The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Simpleton, by Charles Reade

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: A Simpleton

Author: Charles Reade

Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2301]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SIMPLETON ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

A SIMPLETON

By Charles Reade

PREFACE.

It has lately been objected to me, in studiously courteous terms of
course, that I borrow from other books, and am a plagiarist. To this
I reply that I borrow facts from every accessible source, and am not a
plagiarist. The plagiarist is one who borrows from a homogeneous work:
for such a man borrows not ideas only, but their treatment. He who
borrows only from heterogeneous works is not a plagiarist. All fiction,
worth a button, is founded on facts; and it does not matter one straw
whether the facts are taken from personal experience, hearsay, or
printed books; only those books must not be works of fiction.

Ask your common sense why a man writes better fiction at forty than he
can at twenty. It is simply because he has gathered more facts from each
of these three sources,--experience, hearsay, print.

To those who have science enough to appreciate the above distinction,
I am very willing to admit that in all my tales I use a vast deal of
heterogeneous material, which in a life of study I have gathered from
men, journals, blue-books, histories, biographies, law reports, etc. And
if I could, I would gladly specify all the various printed sources to
which I am indebted. But my memory is not equal to such a feat. I can
only say that I rarely write a novel without milking about two hundred
heterogeneous cows into my pail, and that "A Simpleton" is no exception
to my general method; that method is the true method, and the best, and
if on that method I do not write prime novels, it is the fault of the
man, and not of the method.

I give the following particulars as an illustration of my method:

In "A Simpleton," the whole business of the girl spitting blood, the
surgeon ascribing it to the liver, the consultation, the final solution
of the mystery, is a matter of personal experience accurately recorded.
But the re