Excerpt from Is He the Man? I wao'ra this book twenty years ago. In the twenty years I have never once read the story. I do not recollect a syllable of it; nothing survives in memory but the title and the name of the publisher, the purchaser of the original copyright. That publisher desired to sell his remaining rights in a novel to which he was good enough to say my name as it now stands in public esteem might communicate some trifling sigmi ficance. He first asked me to buy it; he then went to my friend Mr. Andrew Chatto, of the firm whose imprint this volume carries, and Mr. Chatto begged me to allow him to reprint the story, which he assured me had kept him out of bed; he was also desirous of serving a brother publisher. The reader will not of course accept it as Clark Russell's, but as the composition of a jolly young waterman of that name, who flourished twenty years ago at Ramsgate, where he wrote this and other stories which a later Clark Russell is extremely pleased to know are entirely forgotten. I will not say that this book is good; but - it may be read. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com 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.