, by _dynamics_ rather than _mechanics_, by
getting the fellows to respect themselves and one
another, rather than by sitting by them with a
thick stick."

And now, having broken my resolution never to write a Preface, there are
just two or three things which I should like to say a word about.

Several persons, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, while
saying very kind things about this book, have added, that the great
fault of it is, "too much preaching;" but they hope I shall amend in
this matter should I ever write again. Now this I most distinctly
decline to do. Why, my whole object in writing at all was to get the
chance of preaching! When a man comes to my time of life and has his
bread to make, and very little time to spare, is it likely that he will
spend almost the whole of his yearly vacation in writing a story just to
amuse people? I think not. At any rate, I wouldn't do so myself.

The fact is, that I can scarcely ever call on one of my contemporaries
now-a-days without running across a boy already at school, or just ready
to go there, whose bright looks and supple limbs remind me of his
father, and out first meeting in old times. I can scarcely keep the
Latin Grammar out of my own house any longer; and the sight of sons,
nephews, and godsons, playing trap-bat-and-ball, and reading "Robinson
Crusoe," makes one ask oneself, whether there isn't something one would
like to say to them before they take their first plunge into the stream
of life, away from their own homes, or while they are yet shivering
after the first plunge. My sole object in writing was to preach to boys:
if ever I write again, it will be to preach to some other age. I can't
see that a man has any business to write at all unless he has something
which he thoroughly believes and wants to preach about. If he has this,
and the chance of delivering himself of it, let him by all means put it
in the shape in which it will be most likely to get a hearing; but let
him never be so carried away as to forget that preaching is his object.

A black soldier, in a West Indian regiment, tied up to receive a couple
of dozen, for drunkenness, cried out to his captain, who was exhorting
him to sobriety in future, "Cap'n, if you preachee, preachee; and if
floggee, floggee; but no preachee and floggee too!" to which his captain
might have replied, "No, Pompey, I must preach whenever I see a chance
of being listened to,