Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Or Every Man His Own Boswell

This book was written for a generation which knew nothing or next to nothing of war, and hardly dreamed of it; which felt as if invention must have exhausted itself in the miracles it had already wrought. Let the sensible reader take it for granted that the author would agree with him in changing whatever he would alter, in leaving out whatever he would omit, if it seemed worthwhile to tamper with what was finished long ago. The notes which have been added will not interrupt the current of the conversational narrative.