PREFACE. I was dozing by my evening fire-side, when one of those hasty visions passed before my mind, which sometimes seem to reveal the contents of volumes in the space of a few seconds. It appeared as if every article of furniture in the room became suddenly animated with life, and endowed with the gift of speech; and that each one came forward to solicit my attention and beseech me to write its life and adventures. The portly piano, advancing with a sort of elephantine step, informed me that its rosewood covering was violently torn from its birth-place in the forests of Brazil; its massive legs of pine grew in the wilds of Maine; the iron which formed its frame was dug from a mine in Sweden; its strings were fabricated at Rouen; the brazen rods of the pedals were made of copper from Cornwall mixed with silver from the mines of Potosi; the covering of the keys was formed of the tusks of elephants from Africa; the varnish was from India; the hinges from Birmingham, and the whole were wrought into their present form at the world-renowned establishment of Messrs. Chickering & Co., Washington.'street, Boston. While I was musing on the singular fact that the four quarters of the globe had been ransacked for the materials of which to construct this single instrument, I heard an extraordinary rattling: in the china closet. On opening the door and looking in, I-beheld with amazement, every article, plates, platters, bowls anu tamblers, castors and cream-pots, salvers and salt-dishes-artitudínizing, as if inspired with some extraordinary emotion. All began to speak at once, and a confusion, worse than that of Babel, saluted my ears. Amid the din, I could gather only a few detached sounds. The set of phials in the castor-stand seemed to have the advantage of lungs, and I therefore gathered the following sentences: "I," said Mustard, "was raised by an old woman in France, and manufactured in Paris." "And I," said Pepper, "was cultivated by the swarthy Malays of Sumatra, and have made a voyage half round the world to get here!' "And I," said Ketchup, "came into existence as a mushroom, and was pickled by Underwood of Boston." "And I," said Soy," was reared and manufactured in Japan!" "And 1," said Sweet Oil, "came frora the sunny climes of Italy." "And I," said Vinegar, with a scowl and a scream, "I came from hard cider!" Bewildered by the clan ors of the china closet, I shut the door in the face of the insurgents; but if I had silenced one source of annoyance, another was before me. The carpet rose and fell like waves beneath my feet, and at length one of the large circular figures stood erect, and with goggling eyes and enormous mouth, addressed me as follows:-" I was born upon the backs of sheep that were fed in Asia Minor; I was spun by those who pray five times a day to Mahomet; the colors that decorate me were gathered from the three kingdoms of nature, and I was woven in a machine, the invention of which consumed twenty centuries!" Scarcely was this speech ended, when I saw the mirror swaying rapidly back and forth, and after a moment it exclaimed: "Listen to me! The glass which forms my face was once the waste sand of the pit: this was purified and exalted by fire. I was then polished by the artisans of Paris. The quicksilver which gives me my magical power, was dug from the mines of Almaden, a thousand feet below the surface of the earth: the gold which gilds my frame was washed from the Mountains of the Moon by the Niger, and having passed through the purse of the king of Ashantee, was beaten to the thinness of the thirty thousandth part of an inch." Hardly was this burst of rhetoric ended, when the Argand lamp declared that its oil once dwelt in the head of a whale seventy feet in length, and which had ploughed the Pacific for half a century. A book that lay upon the table, spoke of containing in its leaves a variety of rags, gathered from the four winds, each of which could tell a tale and a sofa said something of hair from the tails of wild horses caught or the Pampas of South America, and lofty trees of mahogany cut down amid the mighty forests of Campeachy. The soene grow more and more bewildering-and as each object seemed to be endowed with a fiercer aspect and a louder tone, my heart beat violently and I awoke! Looking around, I saw before me a note from the printing office, which ran thus :"Dear Sir,--Please furnish us copy for the preface to the 'Enterprise, Industry, and Art of Man.’ Yours, J. R." If the kind and considerate reader will bear in mind that a preface, though placed at the beginning, is the last thing written; and if, moreover, he has the patience to peruse the following pages-he may come to the conclusion that the preceding dream was neither unnatural, nor a very unapt interpretation of the contents of the volume. |