ABOUT BOOK

This juvenile effort is a field of prickles into which none may be advised to penetrate—I made the attempt lately in cold blood and came back shuddering, but I had read enough to have the profoundest reason for declining to tell what the book is about. And yet I have a sentimental interest in "Better Dead," for it was my first--published when I had small hope of getting any one to accept the Scotch--and there was a week when I loved to carry it in my pocket and did not think it dead weight.