Preface [pp. 1-2]

:-_ — _~:'x;t_ LL a mistake. The Preface is a misnomer-a bull. It pretends to be written be fore the work-it is, in reality, as all authors know, written after the work is
'.1 - done. It is a literary back door which has been witched around in front, and got
A,_,,>. - the door-plate of the interior THOMPSON nailed to it by mistake. A-work with a
i YtZ ell |Preface is a literary PADDY-from-Cork's coat, which unbuttons behind.
The true use of the Preface is glorification over the past. In the Preface we
'I~~8 ~~~ i>meditate on the big thing we've done-and drink the memory of that big thing with
i ~ = a pleasant nutty flavor on our smacked lips, as of old brown sherry. We sit in the
b Preface like a good boy on a high chair, just before bed-time, and invite pats on
the head for having been amiable all day. The Preface is nothing whatever but a
a /,Cob rsermon on than delightful text out of Miss JANE TAYLOR'S Pharisaism adapted to
Infant minds:
"How pleasant is Saturday night
When we've tried all the week to be good!"
Co)nsistently with this acknowledgment-glory to VANITY FAIR I Let every soul which knoweth the value of
hearty laughter, or quiet smiles, respond Glory! Glory! Shout every man who needeth not to have good jokes
explained to him! Father Time himself shouts Glory-for lo, that old fellow who has certainly lived long enough
to.know what is good, pays us the distinguished compliment of uncorking his newest year on the birthday of
our Third Volume.
Years, you see, are unlike Wine in this respect, that the freshest is always the best. And Time may well do us
the honor of setting forth his finest vintage at our inauguration party. We have improved the old man-he has
grown better for us since the last holidays. We have crowned his white poll with the first perennial garland
which was ever plucked from the boughs of American wit. The blossoms with which a year ago we decked
the sexmilliarian's brow have outlasted the summer-they are fresh and fragrant still!
" Qui vive un ano,"y say the Andalusians, " puede viver por siempre, "-" Live a year, and you can live forever." There
be those who have (joubted the possibility of either of these terms of existence for. a journal undertaking
America's laughing censorship. We have demonstrated the one possibility. We are demonstrating the other.
And why is it impossible in America to be everlastingly funny? Our people all stand on a level, say the
doubters-we have no privileged h-i,igher classes to laugh at. Our rulers are of home-manufacture-if they show
long ears, we hold the power of abasing those elegant appendages to the shades of private life so soon that we
have no time to joke at them.
But look! We are all rulers. We enjoy the daily possibility of laughing at Kings. We are all kings-we
laugh at ourselves. A man will laugh at himself when he will permit nobody else to laugh at him. How many
a TOODLES has come home from some absurd bargain of his own to snicker at his simple-mindedness in the
privacy of his own coat-sleeves and closet-to ridicule those absurd stocks which have burnt his fingers, more
pungently than I!e would have allowed himself to satirize that other purchase in the hosiery line-Mrs. TOODLE'S
gloves which froze his thumbs I To do with yourself what you please-that is the great franchise of American
liberty. To laugh at yourself that is the highest franchise of all franchises!
And as to the people who represent us. We know they stay above the political horizon but a short while.
We scarcely laugh at our representatives before lau,ghter changes to scorn, and with the breath of a vote, they
are dissolved away into obscurity. But this is a quick nation. If heretofore it has not laughed as quick as it
has voled, that has been because VANITY FAIR was not yet risen to show it the way. Henceforth we will cure
the bad influences of place and power, not by the surgeon's knife which cuts off the limb of government, but by
the doctor's plaster which cures it. We will laugh our officers into common sense.
What have we not done already? Since the year 1860 rose upon us, we have carried health into every
secret spring of govermental act-ion. Our principle is that; well known dogma of the Doctors-"before taken to
be well shakevl"-and we would not have any man taken for a ruler before it had been discovered whether he
could be shaken by the jokes of VANITY FAIR. That should be a Constitutional condition of nomination. An
Alderman should be obliged to shake off all his superfluous obesity by a perusal of our remarks on the Old Red
Gil ape a A I n, Id B M,