

E-text prepared by David Clarke, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital
material generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
      http://www.archive.org/details/ifyesperhaps00halerich





IF, YES, AND PERHAPS.

Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations, with Some Bits of Fact.

by

EDWARD E. HALE.







Boston:
Fields, Osgood, & Co.,
Successors To Ticknor and Fields.
1869.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
Ticknor and Fields,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District
of Massachusetts.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.




DEDICATION.


I dedicate this book to the youngest of my friends, now two hours old.
Fun, fact, and fancy,--may his fresh life mix the three in their just
proportions.

MILTON, June 6, 1868.




PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.


The title to this book has met with general opprobrium, except in a few
quarters, where it was fortunately regarded as beneath contempt. Colonel
Ingham even exacted an explanation by telegraph from the Editor, when he
learned from the Governor-General of Northern Siberia what the title
was. This explanation the Editor gave in the following note. It is,
however, impossible to change the title, as he proposes. For reasons
known to all statesmen, it is out of the question to swap horses in
crossing a river; and all publishers know that it is equally impossible
to change titles under those circumstances.


                                             BOSTON, October 