_If he had lived he would have done so; but his spirit was greater than his strength. When death came to him unconnected sections of this book, amounting to about three-fifths of the matter contained in Volume One and about one-third of that contained in Volume Two, were in type, awaiting his revision. Much of the remainder was in manuscript--some parts of it practically completed, some of it more or less roughly drafted. My task has been, substantially, to supply some dates, to fill some blanks, and to edit, coördinate, and join the material left by my father. That task I have performed with reverence and care, and if the errors and defects in this work--which I hope are few--be recognized as mine, and the merits and beauties in it--which I know to be many--be recognized as his, then the responsibility of authorship will be rightly divided._ _Mr. Winter was of many moods,--and, when possible, he wrought at his writing as he felt inclined. That is the reason why some passages in this book which stand near to its close were finished and polished by him, while others, much earlier, were left incomplete or isolated. The subject of The Theatrical Syndicate, for example, was thoroughly familiar to him, and he wrote the section devoted to that subject in intervals of his restudy of “The Return of Peter Grimm,” a play about which he had written, for this book, little but rough notes when the end came (I have, herein, reprinted his criticism of that play previously recorded in another place). The last passage in the text on which he worked is that treating of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” He brought the revised manuscript of that passage to me on the afternoon of June 2 and asked me to type it for him, saying: “I like the earnestness of it, and if you will make a fair copy for me I will go over it once more in the morning and dismiss it: I am too tired to go on to-day.” On June 3, 4, and 5, although suffering acutely, he insisted on rising, each day, and attempted to work, but was unable to do so. On the morning of June 5 he was forced to take to his bed. That was the beginning of the end._