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HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY

COPYRIGHT, 1855, 1903, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published, October, 1903

TO

DR. CHARLES M. HITCHCOCK

OF SAN FRANCISCO

MY EARLIEST, KINDEST, AND MOST CONSTANT FRIEND

THESE SKETCHES

ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

BY

THE AUTHOR

JOHN PHOENIX AND HIS WORK

"IN THE NAME OF THE PROPHET-FIGS!”— John Phoenix chose better than he knew when, at its first publication in 1855, he graced the titlepage of his incomparable Phoenixiana with this legend. It is so truly descriptive of the quality of the repast which he places before us in the sequence of pages so fruitful of the best of fun, that after all any more deeply critical estimate of his permanent value as a caterer to our risibles would seem superfluous. One does not gather figs from thistles, and I am inclined to think that if this tree that is still putting forth leaves to-day had not produced good fruit in the long ago, we should not, a half century after, find anyone hardy enough to stand sponsor for it in an age that is by no means lacking in fruittrees of its own.

From the day in the early seventies of a bygone century when I was suspended from school for a joyous period of twenty-four hours for turning the solemn function of declamation into. a riotous orgie of giggling by reciting Phoenix's

Maritime Anecdote in which old Miss Tarbox and Hardy Lee figure so prominently, until the present moment I have always had a warm spot in my heart for the venerable Squibob. Suspension from school in those days meant little more than an extra holiday, accompanied perhaps by a certain mild disgrace, but to a soul conscious of rectitude, none the less fruitful for that, and I was grateful to John Phoenix for having unconsciously put me in the way of getting it.

In later periods under more serious conditions his influence has been much the same in its general effect, for I know and have known of no better relief from the cares and vexations of the great struggle than that which these same pages afford him who, in the midst of his perplexities, takes refuge therein. Here we find good, wholesome, honest fun-fun from a pen that eased its own hours of toil by the lively recreations in which it indulged itself; and I can not but think that just as the vagarious fancies of Squibob have served as a sort of safetyvalve to many a reader oppressed by the complications of the world, so they must have served the heart and mind of him who conceived them.

Had Lieutenant George H. Derby been a

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