PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be
prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
By order of the author,
Per G. G., Chief of Ordnance.
EXPLANATORY

IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro
dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the
ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last.
The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork;
but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of
personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers
would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not
succeeding.
The author.