Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE INITIALS A Story of Modern Life By THE BARONESS TAUTPHŒUS AUTHOR OF “QUITS,” “AT ODDS,” ETC. [Illustration: Publisher’s Logo] PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. --------------------- PREFACE. -------------- _Initial_, adj. [_Initial_, Fr.; _initialis_, from _initium_, Lat.] 1. Placed at the beginning. 2. Incipient; not complete.—JOHNSON’S _Dictionary_. _Initial, ale._ adj. Il se dit des lettres, des syllables qui commencent un mot. En termes de calligraphie et d’imprimerie, on appelle plus particulièrement _lettre initiale_, la lettre qui commence un livre, un chapitre, etc. Il s’emploie aussi substantivement, au feminin, pour lettre initiale. _Il n’a signé ce billet que de l’initiale de son nom, que de son initiale. Dans ce manuscrit, les initiales sont en rouge._—_Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française._ I THINK these quotations authorise me to call the following pages “THE INITIALS.” According to Dr. Johnson, they would be intended to be “placed at the beginning;” would be “incipient; not complete.” It is the public who have now to decide whether what has been placed at the beginning is to have a continuation, whether what is incipient, and not complete, is to be formed and completed. _Un billet signé d’une initiale_ gave rise to all the events here related; proving the truth of the words of Bayley, in his _Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions_, that, “In everything we do we may be possibly laying a train of consequences, the operation of which may terminate only with our existence.” Had those initials not excited curiosity or interest, the so-signed _billet_ would have been thrown aside and forgotten, or directed to the post-town from whence it came, there to seek the writer, or to be consigned to the dead-letter office. And so it will be with these “Initials,” should they awake no interest, nor excite a wish to know more; they too will be thrown aside and forgotten, or it may be that the manuscript will be redirected to the place from whence it came, thence to be consigned to merited oblivion in the dead-letter drawer of an old writing-table, among a number of truths dressed in fiction, which had been intended for publication under the names of Journals, Reminiscences, Tales, Novels, or whatever else they may have been entitled.