In this part of the book, and
subsequently in the Prologues to the stories, it has been my
object to give the reader one more glimpse at that artist-life
which circumstances have afforded me peculiar opportunities of
studying, and which I have already tried to represent, under
another aspect, in my fiction, "Hide-and-Seek." This time I wish
to ask some sympathy for the joys and sorrows of a poor traveling
portrait-painter--presented from his wife's point of view in
"Leah's Diary," and supposed to be briefly and simply narrated by
himself in the Prologues to the stories. I have purposely kept
these two portions of the book within certain limits; only
giving, in the one case, as much as the wife might naturally
write in her diary at intervals of household leisure; and, in the
other, as much as a modest and sensible man would be likely to
say about himself and about the characters he met with in his
wanderings. If I have been so fortunate as to make my idea
intelligible by this brief and simple mode of treatment, and if I
have, at the same time, achieved the necessary object of
gathering several separate stories together as neatly-fitting
parts of one complete whole, I shall have succeeded in a design
which I have for some time past been very anxious creditably to
fulfill.
Of the tales themselves, taken individually, I have only to say,
by way of necessary explanation, that "The Lady of Glenwith
Grange" is now offered to the reader for the first time; and that
the other stories have appeared in the columns of _Household
Words_.
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