I Am Therefore Left To Make A
Feeble Apology For This Book Myself, And All I Can Personally Say Is
That it would have been much worse than it is had it not been for
Dr. Henry Guillemard, who has
Not edited it, or of course the whole
affair would have been better, but who has most kindly gone through
the proof sheets, lassoing prepositions which were straying outside
their sentence stockade, taking my eye off the water cask and fixing
it on the scenery where I meant it to be, saying firmly in pencil on
margins "No you don't," when I was committing some more than usually
heinous literary crime, and so on. In cases where his activities in
these things may seem to the reader to have been wanting, I beg to
state that they really were not. It is I who have declined to
ascend to a higher level of lucidity and correctness of diction than
I am fitted for. I cannot forbear from mentioning my gratitude to
Mr. George Macmillan for his patience and kindness with me, - a mere
jungle of information on West Africa. Whether you my reader will
share my gratitude is, I fear, doubtful, for if it had not been for
him I should never have attempted to write a book at all, and in
order to excuse his having induced me to try I beg to state that I
have written only on things that I know from personal experience and
very careful observation.
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