Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/89



LETTER TO MY FRIENDS,

INSTEAD OF PREFACE.

ERCHANTS, Authors, young Ladies, and Quakers, call all persons, with whom they have any business. Friends; and my readers accordingly are my table and college Friends. Now, at this time, I am about presenting so many hundred Friends with just as many hundred gratis copies; and my Bookseller has orders to supply each on request, after the Fair, with his copy—in return for a trifling consideration and don gratuit to printers, pressmen, and other such persons. But as I could not, like the French authors, send the whole Edition to the binder, the blank leaf in front was necessarily wanting; and thus to write a complimentary word or two upon it was out of my power. I have therefore caused a few white leaves to be inserted directly after the title-page; on these we are now printing.

My Book contains the Life of a Schoolmaster, extracted and compiled from various public and private documents. "With this Biography, dear Friends, it is the purpose of the Author not so much to procure you a pleasure as to teach you how to enjoy one. In truth, King Xerxes should have offered his prize-medals, not for the invention