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Excerpt from Statistics of the West: At the Close of the Year 1836 We have no particular partiality for the task of writing a preface. It is a ceremony imposed by custom, and is in general as irksome to the writer, as it is useless to the reader of the work, to which it is appended. Publishers, however, have their own notions of what is proper, and in their apprehension the preface is a component part of a well gotten up book, and may not be dispensed with without a departure from a longstanding and inflexible law of their profession. We hold a different faith, and are bold enough to avow our belief, that if there be an abuse in literature, demanding above all others, to be submitted to the process of immediate abolition, it is this one of forcing an author to suppl his own book with a letter of introduction. For such, in practice, is most usually the substance of a preface. It is a brief history of the birth and parentage of the book, wherein it is expected that the author shall explain why it was written, and wherefore it has been published, with various other matters of no importance whatever in themselves, and of no interest to any except the party thus offending against good manners and correct taste. The only valuable quality that we have ever been discerning enough to discover in a preface, is the opportunity which it affords to a modest author to herald the peculiar reluctance with which he does an act that is entirely voluntary on his part, and which he undertakes with the greatest apparent self-complacency. In these brief pages we read volumes of evidence in favour of the patriotism and benevolence of authors; and we cannot but honour a race so prolific in good offices, performed from the most amiable motives, yet attended with embarrassing circumstances of bashfulness and self-abasement. We gather from these candid fragments of literary history, that books are usually written merely to fill up a leisure hour, or to gratify the author's propensity for some favourite study, without the most distant intention of publication, and that they are only given to the public at the earnest solicitation of partial friends, or from an amiable desire to be useful to a world which is seldom grateful for the liberal self-sacrifices thus made. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Book details

Book category Books in English Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning Geography

• Full title: Statistics of the West
• Subtitle: At the Close of the Year 1836 (Classic Reprint)
• Author: James Hall
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 334
• EAN: 9781331419556
• ISBN: 9781331419556
• ID: 09750095
• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Weight: 449 g
• Dimensions: 229 × 152 × 18 mm
• Date of publishing: 15. July 2015

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