Jack McIntosh, Hoboes of the Steamer Lanes, Preface I

Hoboes of the Steamer Lanes,
By Jack McIntosh, April 1934. Preface I

Dedicated to Two of the best travellers I know:
Kiddo and Gracie

PREFACE

That you have actually opened the covers and idly turned the leaves this far may be an indication on your part that you have a genuine desire to read this wee story. However, I am generous enough to believe that you have done so in the spirit of the small country boy who came into the house and told his mother that he had set the old brindle hen on two dozen eggs.

"Well", she said, "certainly you don't expect her to hatch them all, do you?"

"No!" He emphatically replied. "I just wanted to see the darned old thing spread herself."

You have not yet crossed the Rubicon; if this has been foisted on you by some leg-pulling person into whose hands it has fallen, it is not too late to be told that it is such a simple story that it does not require reading for a thorough understanding.

But in the event that you do want to go ahead, it might be well for me to tell you that the story is nothing but a brief resume of the first leg of a trip made in the summer of 1933 with my brother, Jim.

The narrative is essentially true, although I have in places made use of my "fisherman's license" in setting forth the conversation among our various friends. Rest assured that I did not spend a "Boswell's summer," running about with a pencil in one hand and a notebook in the other, Quite on the contrary, I did nothing of the kind. The whole thing was written on our return home, and I may add, under the most comfortable of conditions.