Excerpt from Wood-Notes Wild Prefaces are, I believe, out of date now; nevertheless, at the risk of being counted Old-fashioned, I wish to say a'few words to my readers on launching upon the market this collection of verse. A few years ago, I had printed a small booklet of verse, and the same received very favorable notice, not only from home papers, but also from many of the leading newspapers, both in the East and West; the whole edition of one thousand Oopies was sold out in fifteen days, which was very gratifying to me, and since then I have often been importuned to risk something on a larger scale. This I have now done, in issuing the present volume Of wood-notes wild. I may not even be rated as a fourth class writer Of verse, but let us remember that every star is not a comet, every flower is not a rose, and every hill is not an alp; and if I have been endowed with a small share Of the poetic fire, surely I am justified in making use of it, humble though it be. There has been no attempt made at classification, but, to please a whim Of my own, I have had the pieces printed in the order in which they were written. I now leave wood-notes wild in the hands of, and to the mercy of, a generous public, and I hope that none of my readers will lay aside this collection of verse without having received some crumbs Of pleasure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.