In The Sixties

In nothing else under the latter-day sun-not even in the mysterious department of woman’s attire-has Fashion been more variable, or more eccentric in its variations, than in the matter of prefaces. The eternal revolution of letters devours its own children so rapidly that for the hardiest of them ten years count as a generation; each succeeding decade has whims of its own about prefaces. Now it has been the rule to make them long and didactic, and now brief and with a twist toward flippancy.