The American Boy's Handy Book/Preface

Unless boys have materially changed their habits in the last few years, it matters little what the preface of this book may contain, for it will be "skipped" without a passing glance. Still, in the established order of things, a preface, even if unnoticed by younger readers, is necessary to enable the author to state his purposes in undertaking the work, and to modestly put forward his claims on public attention.

It is the memory of the longing, that used to possess myself and my boy friends of a few years ago, for a real practical American boy's book, that has induced me to offer this volume.

The sports, amusements, and games embraced in this book are intended to reach the average American boy of any age, not too young to fly a kite or too old to enjoy a day's good fishing.

The book is based upon personal experiments and experiences, and is free, as far as lay within my power to make it, of foreign or technical terms or phrases.

Well do I remember the impracticable chemical experiments, necessitating professional skill and the use of compli​cated and expensive apparatus, the impossible feats of legerdemain and the time-worn conundrums, riddles, and games that help to make up the contents of the boy's books of my youth.

Unfamiliar and foreign terms, references to London shops as places to procure the articles mentioned, glittering generalities, and a general disregard for details are the marked characteristics of the books to which I refer.

Never shall I forget the disappointment experienced, when after consulting the index, I sought the article on paper balloons and found only the bare statement of the fact that balloons made of paper and filled with heated air would ascend. If I remember aright, the whole description occupies less than four lines.

Although the greater portion of the contents of the present volume has never been published before, some of it appeared as short articles in the St. Nicholas Magazine; and the directions and descriptions then given have been tested by thousands of boys throughout the United States, and, judging from the letters I have received, with uniform success.

Of course, such a book cannot, in the nature of things, be exhaustive, nor is it, indeed, desirable that it should be. Its use and principal purpose are to stimulate the inventive faculties in boys, to bring them face to face with practical emergencies when no book can supply the place of their own common sense and the exercise of personal intelligence and ingenuity.

Many new ideas will suggest themselves to the practical, ready-witted American boy, many simplifications and improve​ments on the apparatus here described; but it is hoped and expected by the author that the directions here given, as far as they go, will be found intelligible and practicable.

Nor is the volume, as is too often the case with this class of books, only to be made use of by lads with an almost unlimited supply of money at their disposal.

All apparatus described are either to be constructed of material easily obtained by almost any boy without cost, or by a very small outlay.

The author would also suggest to parents and guardians that money spent on fancy sporting apparatus, toys, etc., would be better spent upon tools and appliances.

Let boys make their own kites and bows and arrows; they will find a double pleasure in them, and value them accordingly, to say nothing of the education involved in the successful construction of their home-made playthings.

The development of a love of harmless fun is itself no valueless consideration. The baneful and destroying pleasures that offer themselves with an almost irresistible fascination to idle and unoccupied minds find no place with healthy activity and hearty interest in boyhood sports.