Excerpt from Waifs: A Collection of Miscellany<br><br>Every human life is, at the same time, an allegory and a reality. The reality, in its individual aspect, is more or less intelligible. Each one essays to read the riddle of the Sphinx, and hazards a guess at its practical solution. But for the alle gory we need ah interpreter. Here, then, is the mission of the novelist. He views in us what we, engrossed with the intense earnestness of living, have neither time nor disposition to define for ourselves. He emphasizes our thought, and analyzes what had seemed to us our fleeting emotions. He shows these to be correlated expressions of the inherent tendency which shapes our destiny. He explains to us the significance of the facts and fancies in our life with which we have superficial acquaintance.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.