t , The Day Before Yesterday " SIR. —I am indebted
to Mr. Derek Hudson for his complimentary references to my book ; but it is perhaps worth pointing out, by your kindness, that, in one respect, he is less just to it than he would no doubt wish to be. To have confined myself to what is called a " study " or a " sketch " of the lives bf my parents, grandparents and great-grand- parents, and of my Own early days, in other words to have wriytotenndtahlei book largely out of my head, would have cost me, as every writer of experience knows, infinitely less time and labour. What. is needed by the younger generation, however, is that it should understand, be question, what "the good old times," which some people hanker after or picture inaccurately, were actually like, For a large proportion of the folk who went before us, these times, as may be ascertained, were a period of preventable ill health, pain and sorrow, of unduly shortened existence, of physical and mental poverty, and, in no small measure, of social and political darkness, of religious terrors, and of a limited conception of the universe—or universes.
For this reason I felt it to be a duty, without attempting the historian or reducing the readableness of the book, to take some pains to document the narrative, and 1 may be permitted to point out that the five chapters, "Scraps of History," have an unusual footnote, " Readers who happen to be well posted on the period or lack leisure may skip this section, which is included in order to stress the heartening social advance which has been made within a few generations."—Yours sincerely,
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