Page:Tom Brown's School Days.djvu/11

Rh themselves and one another, rather than by sitting by them with a thick stick."

And now, having broken my resolution never to write a Preface, there are just two or three things which I should like to say a word about.

Several persons, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, while saying very kind things about this book, have added, that the great fault of it is "too much preaching;" but they hope I shall amend in this matter should I ever write again. Now this I most distinctly decline to do. Why, my whole object in writing at all was to get the chance of preaching! When a man comes to my time of life and has his bread to make, and very little time to spare, is it likely that he will spend almost the whole of his yearly vacation in writing a story just to amuse people? I think not. At any rate, I wouldn't do so myself.

The fact is, that I can scarcely ever call on one of my contemporaries now-a-days without running across a boy already at school, or just ready to go there, whose bright looks and supple limbs remind me of his father, and our first meeting in old times. I can scarcely keep the Latin Grammar out of my own house any longer: and the sight of sons, nephews, and godsons, playing trap-bat-and-ball and reading "Robinson Crusoe," makes one ask oneself whether there isn't something one would like to say to them before they take their first plunge