PREFACE A Quaker, by name Benjamin Lay (who was a little cracked in the head, though sound at heart), took one of his compositions once to Benjamin Franklin that it might be printed and published. Franklin, having looked over the manuscript, observed that it was deficient in arrangement. "It is no matter," replied the author, "print any part thou pleasest first." Many are the speeches and the sermons and the treatises and the poems and the volumes which are like Benjamin Lay's book; the head might serve for the tail, and the tail for the body, and the body for the head, either end for the middle, and the middle for either end, nay, if you could turn them inside out, like a polypus or a glove, they would be no worse for the operation. ROBERT SOUTHEY, The Doctor. |