原文 (英语)

AUTHOR’S PREFACE It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty gentlewomen have asked him - and asked in various notes of wonder, pity, and reproof - “What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle? “How could such a thing have entered any man’s mind?” There are subjects that seem like rain drops to fall upon a man’s head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter.  The result of no train of thought, there is the picture, the statue, the book, wafted, l