It is verily more difficult to write a good preface for a book than to write the book itself. We don’t mind telling the reader, very confidentially, that this is not, by any means, our first effort at a preface for this work: and we earnestly hope that the public will not pronounce this ninth one so stupid as we deemed the eight preceding ones that we tore up.

It will be perceived that our hero bears the historic name of John Smith. Original old John Smith, the Virginia settler, met with many adventures—some of them funny and others not so funny—among the latter was the affair with Miss Pocahontas and her stern old parent: and we claim, for our own John Smith, as many adventures as his illustrious namesake—some of them quite as funny and others funnier.

Nothing in this narrative of real incidents is at all calculated to reflect on the excellent character of Mr. Smith: and this is because we esteem him very highly and not from any dread of the law; for John Smith is so multitudinous, that one could handle the name with impunity, and not incur any risk of prosecution for libel. What would a court say to an action against a writer for libeling John Smith, yeoman!—especially when the writer should plead that he never meant that