GOLD AND GLORY OR, WILD WAYS OF OTHER DAYS

Book excerpt: Only an apology for having written this historical tale. My private opinion is, that all writers of historical tales should return me thanks if I apologize for them with myself, all in a body, the truer the tale the ampler being the spirit of the apology. While I have been writing this tale, sometimes in its most important or serious portions, I have been startled by detecting my own mouth widening with an absurd smile, or by hearing a ridiculous chuckle issuing from my own lips, and have suddenly discovered that I was quite unconsciously repeating to myself the famous old Scotch anecdote of the old woman and the Scotch preacher—"That's good, and that's Robertson; and that's good, and that's Chalmers; ... and that's bad, and that's himsel'." Turning the old woman into the more learned among my possible readers, and the Scotch preacher into myself, I read the anecdote—"That's good, and that's Prescott; that's good, and that's Robertson; that's good, and that's guide-book; that's good, and that's Arthur Helps; and that's bad, and that's hersel'." I can only wind up my apology by pleading, that at least my badness has not gone the length of distorting a single fact, nor of giving to this wonderful page of history any touch of false colouring.