Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
FACTS AND FANCIES
FOR THE CURIOUS
FROM THE
HARVEST-FIELDS OF LITERATURE
PREFACE
The electrotype plates of a compilation which maintainedremarkable popularity for more than thirty years,“Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest Fields ofLiterature,” having been destroyed in the fire whichwrecked the extensive plant of the J. B. LippincottCompany in November, 1899, the publishers requestedthe compiler to prepare a companion volume on similarlines. Like its predecessor, at once grave and sportive,the present miscellany offers, as Butler says, “a runningbanquet that hath much variety, but little of a sort.”It is a handy book for the shady nook in summer, orthe cosey fireside in winter; for the traveller in a parlor-car,or on an ocean-steamer; for the military post,or the wardroom of a war-ship; for the waiting-roomof a doctor or a dentist; for the stray half-hour wheneveror wherever it may chance. It is not for a class ofreaders, but for the multitude. Even the scholar, whowill find little in its pages with which he is unfamiliar,will have ready reference to facts and fancies which arenot always within convenient reach. Even the captainsof industry, in moments of relaxation, may find in itsmanifold topics something more than what Autolycuscalls “unconsidered trifles.” It makes no pretensionto systematic completeness; it is at best, fragmentary,but as we are told in “Guesses at Truth,” a dinner offragments is often the best dinner, and in the absenceof a uniform web, patchwork may have a charm of itsown.
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