Master Flea

I

Once upon a time⁠—But what author will venture to begin his tale so nowadays? Obsolete! tedious! Such is the cry of the gentle, or rather ungentle reader, who wishes to be plunged at once, in medias res, according to the wise advice of the old Roman poet. He feels as if some long-winded talker of a guest, who had just entered, was spreading himself out, and clearing his voice to begin an endless discourse, and he angrily closes the book which he had but just opened. The present editor, indeed, of the wonderful tale of Master Flea, thinks this beginning a very good beginning, not to say the best for every history, on which account the most excellent storytellers that are, namely, nurses, old women, etc. have at all times made use of it, but as every author writes chiefly to be read, he⁠—that is, the aforesaid editor⁠—will not at any rate deprive the kind reader of the pleasure of actually being his reader. He tells him therefore at once, without more circumlocution, that this same Peregrine Tyss, of whose strange adventures this history is to treat, had never, on any Christmas evening, felt his heart so throb with anxious joyful expectation, as precisely on that with which begins the narration of his adventures.