IN NORTHUMBERLAND, AND ON THE SCOTTISH BORDER; INTERSPERSED WITH BRIEF NOTICES OF INTERESTING EVENTS IN BORDER BY STEPHEN OLIVER, The Younger, AUTHOR OF "SCENES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF FLY FISHING." "Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a; A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a." OLD SONG. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. MDCCCXXXV. PREFACE. CUSTOM appears to have rendered an Address to the Reader, a Preface, an Introduction, or a Dedication indispensable to every book, whether the author has any thing to say or not. At present the writer feels himself in the latter predicament; for he has nothing to communicate, either with respect to the design of the volume, or his motives for writing it. He neither wishes to deceive the public, by assigning motives which did not actuate him; nor himself, by expecting that such an account would be believed. Many persons who enumerate a string of motives as those which induced them to write, generally keep the true ones carefully concealed. They mostly deceive themselves, however, in attempting to deceive others, but not in the same manner; for they do not become persuaded of the truth of the motives which they assign: "You never heard of a coiner, did you," asks Miss Edgeworth, "who was cheated by his own bad shilling?" |
