rable
antagonist, George Gering. Also in The Seats of the Mighty, Doltaire,
the half-villain, overshadows the good English hero from first to last;
and yet, despite the unconscious partiality for the individual in both
books, English character and the English as a race, as a whole, are
dominant in the narrative.

There is a long letter, as a dedication to this book, addressed to my
father; there is a note also, which explains the spirit in which the
book was written, and I have no desire to enlarge this introduction in
the presence of these prefaces to the first edition. But I may say that
this book was gravely important to me, because it was to test all my
capacity for writing a novel with an historical background, and, as
it were, in the custom of a bygone time. It was not really the first
attempt at handling a theme belonging to past generations, because I
had written for Good Words, about the year 1890, a short novel which I
called The Chief Factor, a tale of the Hudson's Bay Company. It was
the first novel or tale of mine which secured copyright under the new
American copyright act of 1892.

There was a circumstance connected with this publication which is
interesting. When I arrived in New York, I had only three days in which
to have the book printed in order to secure the copyright before Good
Words published the novel as its Christmas annual in its entirety. I
tried Messrs. Harper & Brothers, and several other publishers by turn,
but none of them could undertake to print the book in the time. At last
some kind friend told me to go to the Trow Directory Binding Company,
which I did. They said they could not print the story in the time. I
begged them to reconsider. I told them how much was at stake for me. I
said that I would stay in the office and read the proofs as they came
from the press, and would not move until it was finished. Refusal had
been written on the lips and the face of the manager at the beginning,
but at last I prevailed. He brought the foreman down there and then.
Each of us, elated by the conditions of the struggle, determined to pull
the thing off. We printed that book of sixty-five thousand words or so,
in forty-eight hours, and it arrived in Washington three hours before
the time was up. I saved the copyright, and I need hardly say that my
gratitude to the Trow Directory Binding Company was as great as their
delight in having done a really brilliant piece of work.

The day after the copyr