Intro

Via my Dear Friend Charles Caleb Colton

"He that studies books alone, will know how things ought to be; and he that studies men will know how things are; and it would have been impossible to have written these pages, without mixing some what more freely with the world, than inclination might prompt, or judgment approve. For observations made in the cloister, or in the desert, will generally be as obscure as the one, and barren as the other: But he that would paint with his pen, no less than he that would paint with his pencil, must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust. In fact, every author is a far better judge of the pains that his efforts have cost him, than any reader can possibly be; but to what purpose he has taken those pains, this is a question of which his readers will not allow the author a voice, nor even an opinion; from the tribunal of the public there is no appeal, and it is fit that it should be so, otherwise we should not only have rivers of ink expended in bad writing, but oceans more defending it; for he that writes in a bad style, is sure to 'retort' in a worse."

-Colton