Twenty Years of Spoof and Bluff

It has been said that any man of mature age could write at least one interesting book, if he confined himself to relating his own experiences. Well, that is what I have done. This is primarily the story of my life, interspersed with various anecdotes, "wheezes," and "gags," pertaining to a profession concerning the real inside of which the public is mostly ignorant. Like Topsy, the book "growed." An incident recalled here, a story remembered there, has been jotted down at haphazard as the mood seized me. I may add that the incidents recorded in Chapters XIV. and XV., as also the human telescope story in Chapter XIII., first saw the light in the Strand Magazine, to the Editor of which periodical I am indebted for permission to reproduce them here.