Note 30 — Chapter XXX

The editor may as well say here, that, for obvious reasons, the names, counties, etc., used in these manuscripts are feigned, the real localities being close enough to those mentioned for the double purposes of truth and fiction. As one of the "honorable gentlemen" of the Legislature has quoted our references to "provincial" feelings and notions, with a magnificence that proves how thoroughly he is a man of the world himself, we will tell all the rest of the human race, who may happen to read this book, that we have made this explanation lest that comprehensive view of things, which has hitherto been so eager, because a street and a house are named in the pages of a fiction, to suppose that everybody is to believe they know the very individual who dwelt in it, should fancy that our allusions are to this or that particular functionary.—Editor.