Excerpt from Mystery of Edwin Drood, Vol. 2 For some wise purpose, no doubt, the Creator saw fit to place upon the earth a class of people who regard every thing they do or say as perfectly right and proper, and every thing other folks do or say as all wrong. They have a su preme Opinion of their own ideas, and a poor opinion of other people's. Such persons always appear bareheaded in the argumentative field, and have no difficulty in finding a hat which will fit them nicely, even though it may not be SO pleas ant to wear. It would be supposed, however, that, after selecting the hat and putting it on voluntarily, they would be content to wear it, or discard it, and say nothing; but, in stead, they go howling about, disgusted with themselves, 'and making everybody else disgusted with them. In Mr. Dickens' Preface to this book, which was published as an extract, will be found, figuratively speaking, two hats, - 0ne labeled owl-like wisdom, and the other ignorant bigots, and it was highly edifying to Observe with what ease the above mentioned class of individuals discovered that those hats would fit them. This fact leads me to believe that there is a class of people in the world who will admit, - whatever they think of the other characters in this work, - that the character of Mr. Sapsea is not overdrawn. To give the reader some idea of the ridiculous statements that were made concerning the authorship of this work, and which, - notwithstanding they were far more unreasonable than the true statement which affirmed this book to be the pro duction of a spirit-pen, - were accepted as facts by quite a number of persons, I will cite one or two of them in this Preface. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.