The six short stories in this volume have all been written at sea in those brief intervals of enforced rest from an exacting profession which a transatlantic voyage compels; and I have offered them to the public with the full knowledge of the necessity of some explanation to palliate my offence of meddling with literature, and in the belief that I must hang out some sort of a bush to call attention to whatever merits they may have. This bush will be a confession, made, like the confidential communications in all prefaces, into the ear of the reader alone. The reason why I have put my preface--if I may be permitted to misuse the term--at the end of the book instead of at the beginning, is that the confidences I impart may be, by reason of their position between the covers, less likely to be read by the careless or mechanical reviewer or by the superficial “skimmer” of fiction. I was afraid that if the reader should by chance read the preface first, he would not care to peruse the stories, because, having been admitted to the dark room, as it were, and having had the formula of the developer told to him, he might, after he had seen one set of images come up on the dull surface of the negative, find his curiosity abated, his interest gone, and his desire satisfied. These stories have been published in various magazines, at different times, since the centennial year. When the earliest one of the series appeared, I was not a little flattered by being often asked how much of it was true. When the second one came out, this question grew a little stale, and I began to resent the curiosity as to my method of story-telling. The climax was finally reached when I received a letter from a writer of most excellent short stories, in which communication he desired information about the characters in the tale, and led me to understand that he believed the main part of the tale to be true. In my answer to his letter I wrote him this old story of the Western bar-room: A crowd of men were leaning over a bar drinking together and listening to the yarns of a frontiersman who, stimulated by the laughter and applause, was drawing a very long bow. His triumph was not quite complete, however, for he noticed a thin, silent man at the farther end of the bar, whose face did not change its habitual expression at any of the mirth-or wonder-compelling incidents. At last, having directed the fire of his dramatic expression for some time towards the silent man with no result, the Western Munchausen turned to him with an oath and said: “Why in ---- don’t you laugh or cry, or do something, when I tell a story?” “The fact is, stranger,” the sad man replied, in a mournful tone of voice--“the fact is, I’m a liar myself!” I never heard from my correspondent again.