From the INTRODUCTION:

"IF I may be permitted to offer a suggestion, the Crankisms should be read in the spirit in which sermons are listened to—with the object of discovering whom they hit. This will furnish amusement, for what is more entertaining than trying the cap on others?

The settings speak for themselves; but the author desires to express his indebtedness to the artist for having infused life into and lent grace to dead bones of words, and for having, in many cases, given to those words a deeper and more subtle meaning than they themselves could be made to express."