I had got so far and had to nibble again at my pencil for further inspiration, when the door opened and my landlady appeared. She is a worthy woman, and she holds her head on one side like an elderly canary-bird.
"If you please, ma'am, we have lost our Alonzo the Brave."
"You will probably," I replied with great presence of mind, considering that I had no idea what she was talking about, "find him with the fair Imogene."
Here my landlady, with her eyes penetrating the corners, gave a cry of rapture, "There he is! Glory be!" And she pounced on the black and purring stranger, who rose and stretched his back to a mountainous height and his jaws to a pink cavern.
"This is our Alonzo the Brave," and she pressed his rebellious head against the pins on her ample bosom.
"Oh, indeed," I said politely; "and though he is your Alonzo the Brave, I hope you won't mind his being my preface, will you? And may I ask what does he like best in the world besides Imogene?"
Alonzo the Brave had partly wriggled out of her ardent embrace, so that he now hung suspended by his elastic body, while his legs dangled at amazing length.
"I mean in the eating line," I explained.
Catnip, said his biographer, was his favourite weakness.
"Then get him a pennyworth of catnip and put it on my bill," I said benevolently. For I thought as she carried him off struggling, even a poor preface is cheap at a penny, and without Alonzo the Brave there would have been no preface, and without his heroic ancestor the Modest would never have had a chance!
I do hope this explains the following pages. I have not, like Alonzo's ancestor, strictly confined my observations to kings. I have, indeed, ventured to look at all sorts of things, many of them very sublime, and solemn and important, and some less so; and, as the following pages will prove, I have availed myself freely of the privilege of the Modest.
If the two greatest nations of the world have served me as "copy," it is because they are very near and dear, and the Modest, like more celebrated writers, have a way of using their nearest and dearest as "copy," especially their dearest.
In conclusion, I trust I have adequately explained, by help of Alonzo the Brave, that it is the privilege of the Modest to make observations about everything--whether anyone will ever read them, why--that's another matter.