Anecdota Americana: Being, Explicitly, an Anthology of Tales in the Vernacular Elucidatory (Complete)

We have considered it appropriate to publish these anecdotes in the exact text they had when submitted to us. We have believed they are told here by printed word very nearly in the manner and vein in which they are generally told by word of mouth. Casual and unpolished as they are, they are thus more significant, more honestly representative of the age. To have subjected them to any deletion, even any revision, would have been to falsify their character and altogether to misrepresent the soil from which they spring. Hoping the gentle as well as the ungentle reader will confirm our judgment in this matter, we remain, Very sincerely