This page needs to be proofread.
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/9}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
PREFACE.
The requirements of literary conventionality
seem to demand a
preface as a necessary adjunct of
a book—we had nearly written a necessary
evil; and as the beaten path is acknowledged
to be the safest, we yield in cheerful
acquiescence—although to call that a preface
which is usually written after the book is
completed, would seem to unassisted reason
very like a misnomer.
In giving the accompanying pages to the public, we would only say that it has seemed well to us that the widespread and terrible delusion, which so nearly made shipwreck of our infant colony at the close of the sev-
