https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38439
PREFACE.
It is customary for the proprietor when starting a newspaper or periodical to issue a notice to the public explaining—or purporting to explain—the raison d’être of the new venture, which notices, with very trifling exceptions, are to the effect that the projected journal “will supply a want long felt.”
I might, in sending forth the following pages, state something similar with perfect truth, since if the little work be as successful as (I say it with all modesty) it ought to be, it will unquestionably supply a want long felt—by the author.
It is frequently averred nowadays that much that is written bears evidence of being of a non-practical character, and under these circumstances, I felt I should take a pardonable pride in being able to point to one volume in the English language to which this stigma could not be applied; for I flatter myself the subject of Impecuniosity is one with which I have long—too long—been practically familiar.
H. G. Somerville.