The Thirty-Nine Steps

 

by John Buchan

 

TO

 

THOMAS ARTHUR NELSON

 

(LOTHIAN AND BORDER HORSE)

 

My Dear Tommy,

 

You and I have long cherished an affection for that elemental type of tale which

Americans call the “dime novel” and which we know as the “shocker”—the romance

where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of

the possible. During an illness last winter I exhausted my store of those aids

to cheerfulness, and was driven to write one for myself. This little volume is

the result, and I should like to put your name on it in memory of our long

friendship, in the days when the wildest fictions are so much less improbable

than the facts.

 

J.B.

 

Sept. 1915