Excerpt from Wild Oats and Dead Leaves F OR the last ten years I have been so little before the world in my literary capacity, that it is Just possible the taste of the light-reading public may have altered - no less from the inevitable change of opinion which that lapse of time exerts over everything, than from the overworking of a style holding out such great facilities for imitation that the mere reputation of a comic writer has become the last that a literary man at present would wish to possess. 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.