The narratives composing this book are literally true stories of crime.<br />In a majority of the cases the author conducted the prosecutions<br />himself, and therefore may claim to have a personal knowledge of<br />that whereof he speaks. While no confidence has been abused, no<br />essential facts have been omitted, distorted, or colored, and the<br />accounts themselves, being all matters of public record, may be<br />easily verified.<br />The scenes recorded here are not literature but history, and the<br />characters who figure in them are not puppets of the imagination,<br />but men and women who lived and schemed, laughed, sinned and<br />suffered, and paid the price when the time came, most of them,<br />without flinching. A few of those who read these pages may profit<br />perhaps by their example; others may gain somewhat in their<br />knowledge of life and human nature; but all will agree that there are<br />books in the running brooks, even if the streams be turbid, and<br />sermons in stones, though these be the hearts of men. If in some<br />instances the narratives savor in treatment more of fiction than of<br />fact, the writer must plead guilty to having fallen under the spell of<br />the romance of his subject, and he proffers the excuse that, whereas<br />such tales have lost nothing in accuracy, they may have gained in the<br />truth of their final impression.<br /><br />ARTHUR TRAIN.<br /><br />CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING,<br />NEW YORK CITY,<br />April 20, 1908.