IN expressing my acknowledgments for the favorable reception accorded to the previous editions of this story, I may take the present opportunity of adverting¹ to one of the characters, not alluded² to in the Letter of Dedication³. The German oculist⁴ —“Herr Grosse”— has impressed himself so strongly as a real personage on the minds of some of my readers afflicted⁵ with blindness, or suffering from diseases of the eye, that I have received several written applications requesting me to communicate his present address to patients desirous of consulting him! Sincerely appreciating the testimony⁶ thus rendered to the truth of this little study of character, I have been obliged to acknowledge to my correspondents — and I may as well repeat it here — that Herr Grosse has no (individual) living prototype. Like the other Persons of the Drama, in this book and in the books which have preceded it, he is drawn⁷ from my general observation of humanity. I have always considered it to be a mistake in Art to limit the delineation⁸ of character in fiction to a literary portrait taken from any one “sitter.” The result of this process is generally (to my mind) to produce a caricature instead of a character.

November 27th, 1872

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