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Show TO THE READER " He that writes Or makes a feast, more certainly invites His judges than his friends; there's not a guest But will find something wanting or ill dress'd." IN laying before the majesty of the public a couple of volumes like the present, it has become customary for the author to disclaim in his preface all original design of perpetrating a book, as if there were even more than the admitted quantum of sinfulness in the act. Whether or not such disavowals now- a- day receive all the credence they merit, is not for the writer to say; and whether, were the prefatory asseveration, as in the present case, diametrically opposed to what it often is, the reception would be different, is even more difficult to predict. The articles imbodied in the following volumes were, a portion of them, in their original, hasty production, designed for the press; yet the author unites in the disavowal of his predecessors of all intention at that time of perpetrating a book. In the early summer of ' 36, when about starting upon a ramble over the prairies of the " Far West," in hope of renovating the energies of a shattered constitution, a request was made of the writer, by the distinguished editor of the Louisville Journal, to contribute [ vi] to the columns of that periodical whatever, in the course of his pilgrimage, might be deemed of sufficient interest. 1 A series of articles soon after 1 George D. Prentice ( 1802- 70), founder of the Louisville Journal, was graduated from Brown University in 1823. Two years later he became editor of the Connecticut Mirror and in 1828- 50 had charge of the New England Weekly Review. In the spring of 1830, at the earnest solicitation of several influential Connecticut Whigs, he went West to gather data for a life of Henry Clay. Once in Kentucky he threw all the force of his political genius in support of Clay's policy. On No- |