The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her) out of it again—­and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers—­or else stay there.  I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.

[If Harper’s Weekly or the New York Tribune desire to copy these initial chapters into the, reading columns of their valuable journals, just as they do the opening chapters of Ledger and New York Weekly novels, they are at liberty to do so at the usual rates, provided they “trust.”]