'Lena Rivers

If it be true, as some have said, that a secret is safer in a preface than elsewhere, it would be worse than folly for me to waste the "midnight oil," in the manufacture of an article which no one would read, and which would serve no purpose, save the adding of a page or so to a volume perhaps already too large. But I do not think so. I wot of a few who, with a horror of anything savoring of humbug, wade industriously through a preface, be it never so lengthy, hoping therein to find the moral, without which the story would, of course, be valueless. To such I would say, seek no further, for though I claim for "'Lena Rivers," a moral--yes, half a dozen morals, if you please--I shall not put them in the preface, as I prefer having them sought after, for what I have written I wish to have read.