er the very last circumstances which the artifices of
sentimental writing would sanction. Will my lovers excite ridicule
instead of interest, because I have truly represented them as seeing
each other where hundreds of other lovers have first seen each other,
as hundreds of people will readily admit when they read the passage to
which I refer? I am sanguine enough to think not.

So again, in certain parts of this book where I have attempted to excite
the suspense or pity of the reader, I have admitted as perfectly fit
accessories to the scene the most ordinary street-sounds that could be
heard, and the most ordinary street-events that could occur, at the time
and in the place represented--believing that by adding to truth, they
were adding to tragedy--adding by all the force of fair contrast--adding
as no artifices of mere writing possibly could add, let them be ever so
cunningly introduced by ever so crafty a hand.

Allow me to dwell a moment longer on the story which these pages
contain.

Believing that the Novel and the Play are twin-sisters in the family
of Fiction; that the one is a drama narrated, as the other is a drama
acted; and that all the strong and deep emotions which the Play-writer
is privileged to excite, the Novel-writer is privileged to excite also,
I have not thought it either politic or necessary, while adhering to
realities, to adhere to every-day realities only. In other words, I have
not stooped so low as to assure myself of the reader's belief in the
probability of my story, by never once calling on him for the exercise
of his faith. Those extraordinary accidents and events which happen to
few men, seemed to me to be as legitimate materials for fiction to
work with--when there was a good object in using them--as the ordinary
accidents and events which may, and do, happen to us all. By appealing
to genuine sources of interest _within_ the reader's own experience, I
could certainly gain his attention to begin with; but it would be only
by appealing to other sources (as genuine in their way) _beyond_ his
own experience, that I could hope to fix his interest and excite his
suspense, to occupy his deeper feelings, or to stir his nobler thoughts.

In writing thus--briefly and very generally--(for I must not delay
you too long from the story), I can but repeat, though I hope almost
unnecessarily, that I am now only speaking of what I have tried to do.
Between the purpose hinted at here, and the execu