"Then, as all my soules bee, Emparadis'd in you, (in whom alone I understand, and grow and see,)

The rafters of my body, bone Being still with you, the Muscle, Sinew, and Veine, Which tile this

house, will come againe."

TO THE READER

This is a first book, and in it the author has written of experience which is now far and lost, but

which was once part of the fabric of his life.　If any reader, therefore, should say that the book is

"autobiographical" the writer has no answer for him: it seems to him that all serious work in fiction is

autobiographical-- that, for instance, a more autobiographical work than "Gulliver's Travels" cannot

easily be imagined.

This note, however, is addressed principally to those persons whom the writer may have known in

the period covered by these pages. To these persons, he would say what he believes they understand

already: that this book was written in innocence and nakedness of spirit, and that the writer's main

concern was to give fulness, life, and intensity to the actions and people in the book he was creating.

Now that it is to be published, he would insist that this book is a fiction, and that he meditated no

man's portrait here.