The reason why I did not wish to publish this work in England was simply that, in that country, I have never found anyone to take the remotest interest in the subject and such occasional opuscules as I have there devoted to it have invariably been received with very bitter disfavour. Because it is obviously an impertinence in a novelist to insist that his art is an art or of service to the republic, and as not more than four hundred English read my novels, the craftsman’s notes of a person so ignored can have little or no interest. In the United States it is different. Even if I had no following there, the interest taken in the technical sides of any arts or processes is, in that country of intellectual curiosities, so keen, that I should without scruple have ventured on publishing for the benefit of students the notes that have occurred to me during the thirty-seven years in which I have been publishing novels. For I must be pretty nearly the doyen of English writers of the imaginative type--I mean of course in dates of publication, not in terms of age and of course not in terms of merit. And if, faint yet pursuing, I have been able to keep on finding American publishers during such a long space of time, there must be there some sort of a public that will take a little interest in the professional matters that so passionately have interested me. And I do not adopt an apologetic tone towards this work. I may be perfectly wrong in almost everything that I say. If I am, that is the end of me. But the great use of technical discussion is that it arouses interest in the subject discussed. I have had in my day a great number of disciples--mostly of course on the Western side of the Atlantic--and several of them have risen to positions of considerable prominence and are doing work of great beauty. But there is not one of them who to-day acts in any way according to the maxims that I enjoined on him or her. And that is how it should be, the new generation attaining its eminences by using the maxims of the generation preceding as its jumping-off posts. And if the older generation can get its craftsman’s maxims clearly expressed, the process of demolition is all the easier and more thorough. So, my dear Walpole, I at least see it. And since the book is written and as if by _force majeure_ makes its appearance in our country, I do desire that its theories should secure as wide an attention as may be. So I have adopted the stratagem of attaching your name to it. Nevertheless, my gratitude is very profound, and it is in all sincerity that I inscribe myself Your humble, obedient and very thankful servant, F. M. F.