A COURIER OF FORTUNE

TO
RALPH STUART, Esq.

My dear Mr. Stuart: I dedicate this book to you as a mementoof our delightful hours of travel and work together in writing the play—“ACourier of Fortune”—founded upon this story. The circumstancesof our joint literary work were as unusual to me as they werefascinating; for, although the play was commenced in London, the last“curtain” was not written until my wife and I had crossed the Atlanticand journeyed with you on a tour of over ten thousand miles of railwaytravelling, through so many of the marvels of this wonderful Continent.St. Louis; Denver; Salt Lake City; San Francisco; the Pacific Seaboardnorth to Puget Sound; the fertile Palouse Country; Washington,Idaho, and Montana—those wealthy States of boundless promise andmarvellous scenic contrasts; the cities of the Lakes, Duluth and Superior;then the young giant twins, St. Paul and Minneapolis; and byway of Milwaukee and Chicago to New York. A tour of momentousinterest and a collaboration of close-knit sympathy, cementing a friendshipwhich, I assure you, is one of the pleasantest things of my life.

Yours ever,
Arthur W. Marchmont.