In the first chapter of _Shirley_, Charlotte Brontë prologises as follows:-- "If you think ... that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken.... Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you;... It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps toward the middle and close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week; it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb." William Black once wrote a novel called _Madcap Violet_, which he intended for a tragedy, and in which, therefore, we have a right to expect some artistic dignity. About midway in the volume we find the following:-- "At this point, and in common courtesy to his readers, the writer of these pages considers himself bound to give fair warning that the following chapter deals solely and wholly with the shooting of mergansers, curlews, herons, and such like fearful wild fowl; therefore, those who regard such graceless idling with aversion, and are anxious to get on with the story, should at once proceed to chapter twenty-three." At the beginning of the second chapter of _Dr. Thorne_, one of the best of Trollope's novels, we are petted in this manner:-- "A few words must still be said about Miss Mary before we rush into our story; the crust will then have been broken, and the pie will be open to the guests." At the three hundred and seventy-second page of the late Marion Crawford's entertaining story, _The Prima Donna_, the course of the narrative is thus interrupted:-- "Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a little curiosity left. Therefore, I shall not narrate in detail what happened Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what might have been expected to happen at a week-end party during the season when there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, or croquet, or to write or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge all the evening; for that is what it has come to." Finally, in the first chapter of Mr. Winston Churchill's novel, _Coniston_, the author pleads with his reader in this style:--