appropriate the name of Admiral Charles Stewart, "Old Ironsides,"—who did indeed live well into the Civil War period, but who died under very different circumstances,—for the name of the ancient captain in the white house on the hill. I apologize to his manes, his descendants, and his friends for the liberty. 

 Now, I do not write this because I wish to make any apology for the historical novel. Not at all. The thing is slightly overdone at present, but that is proof of its goodness. So far as I am concerned I will stand by my guns. I love to read historic romances when they are good, and I love to write them—even when they are as my own. I expect to write more of them, too; but this really is not one. It is a war story without any war, a sea story without any sea; yet it exhibits a great struggle and rings with a great victory. The reader may characterize it further at pleasure. 

 As for the second part of the volume I have called it Veracious Tales advisedly, for all of these stories are founded upon facts in one way or another. Some of them have been suggested to me by incidents with which I am familiar because in them I bore a small part. The substance of one of them came from a young English traveller who told a romantic incident at a delightful dinner at the New York University Club. A real diary suggested another. An historical mystery as to what became of a certain cargo of slaves captured by Decatur in the Mediterranean evoked a third. Neglected chapters in history and biography are responsible for some of the others, as the Martinique tale, for the Diamond Rock was once a ship! Sir Henry Irving's marvellous rendition of Matthias in The Bells so possessed me with its power that after I came home from the theatre I could not sleep until I had written the story. All of these tales represent real incidents, therefore, or are founded upon them in some way. 

 Writing a short story, with me at least, is very different from writing a novel. I can invent plots of novels without the slightest difficulty, but the making of a short story is different. The making is a case of birth! The single incident, the brief condensed plot, or the vivid character sketch which is necessary to a proper short story has to come to me from outside. The short story is the product of inspiration, the long story the result of labor. Perhaps, therefore, there is more truth in the short story than in the long—from my point of view. 

 At any rate, in this volume are two kinds, and the readers may decide. If they have half as much pleasure out of the book as I had, they will 

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