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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
I do not like writing a preface --- it seems too much like an apology. I have no special apology to tender for offering this collection of New Thought nuggets. They may possess no literary merit, but they have helped men and women. With the exception of "The Secret of the I Am," these essays appeared from month to month in "New Thought," of which magazine I am associate editor. They were written hastily, principally upon the demand of the printer for "copy," and, for the most part, were printed just as they were written, there being no time for revision or polishing up. You may pick up any one of them and find many sentences needing straightening out --- many thoughts which could be better expressed by the change of a few words. Knowing these things, I first thought that I would go over each essay and add a little here, and take away a little there, polishing up and burnishing as I went along. But when I looked over them, my heart failed me. There they were just as they were written --- just as they were dug out of my mind --- and I hadn't the heart to change them. I remembered the circumstances surrounding the writing of every one of them, and I let them alone. A "nugget" polished up would be no longer a nugget. And these thoughts are nuggets --- I dug them myself. I will not say much regarding the quality of the metal --- that is for you --- but you see them just as they came from the mine --- rough, unpolished, mixed with the rock, queerly shaped. If you think that they contain metal of sufficiently good quality, refine them, melt them and fashion them into something useful or ornamental. For myself, I like things with the bark on --- with the marks of the hammer --- with the original quartz adhering to the metal. But others are of different taste --- they like everything to feel smooth to the touch. They will not like these nuggets. Alas, I cannot help it --- I cannot produce the beautifully finished article --- I have nothing to offer other than the crude product of the mine. Here they are, polish them up yourself if you prefer them in that shape --- I will not touch them. W. W. A.
Chicago, October 2, 1902.
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