Compiler's Fanfarre

Delightful deceivers, and merry magicians all, attend! For six successive years have I bobbed up, full of energy, eager, willing, and very urgent for your entertainment; and as I watch you crowding round this my window, I feel sure I have seen you all before: poring, delving, scanning, skipping and eagerly searching those never-to-be-parted-with volumes of Collected Magic--and if I did not love you more than a little I would surely have tired of the memory of your faces.

Remember, I beg of you, as you read this book, that one man's meat is another man's poison, and have hope within you, that you may discover herein the very item your frousty programme lacks. Believe me, the age of miracles has not ceased.

And you, critics, reviewers and turnip-munchers, bestir your jaded parrots in praise of this book, but whether you boom it or burst it, consider also this: that all the secret subtleties, the cute little, quaint little moves, the tricks of affectation and of style, all the glory and delight of accidental discovery, everything in Magic would I readily relinquish if I could have created the four lines which grace the fly-leaf of this book; for more potent indeed than Magic are such accretions or pearls of the mind.

Yours fraternally,