Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David King and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team HONOR EDGEWORTH; or OTTAWA'S PRESENT TENSE, BY "VERA." "An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told." SHAKESPEARE OTTAWA: A. S. WOODBURN. Entered according to Act of Parhament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-two, by A S WOODBURN, in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at Ottawa. PREFACE. In these days of plenty, when books of every subject and nature have become as commonly familiar to men as the blades of grass by the roadside, it seems superfluous to say any word of introduction or explanation on ushering a volume into the world of letters; but, lest the question arise as regards the direct intention or motive of an author, it is always safer that he make a plain statement of his object, in the preface page of his work, thus making sure that he will be rightly interpreted by his readers. In the unpretending volume entitled "Honor Edgeworth," or "Ottawa's Present Tense," the writer has not proposed to make any display of the learning she has acquired by a few years' study, and she would therefore seek to remove, in anticipation, any impression the reader may be inclined to harbor, of her motives having been either selfish or uncharitable. The world of art and science is already aglow with the dazzling beauty of the genius of her many patrons,--the world of letters has in our day a population as thick as the stars in the heavens, or the grains of sand on the beach--and hence it is that rivalry is almost a _passé_ stimulant in this sphere; the heroes and heroines of the pen aim at individual, independent and not comparative, merit. In nine cases out of ten, the author of a work, apart from the gratification it gives himself to indulge his faculties, and whatever influence for better or worse his opinions may have, in the political social or religious world, knows no other aim. In "Honor Edgeworth" the sole and sincere motive of the authoress has been to hold up to the mass the little picture of society, in one of its most marked phases, that she has sketched, as she watched its freaks and caprices from behind the scenes.