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.
