By Mark Twain, who would undoubtedly have focused on the true hero of the narrative – that mischievous rascal, Pippin:
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NOTICE:
Persons attempting to resolve the question of Balrog wings by means of this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to define the nature of Tom Bombadil will be banished; persons attempting to find allegory in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
FOREWORD:
In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Quenya Elvish dialect; the extremest form of the Rhovanion dialect; the ordinary Sindarin dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER 1
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Red Book of Westmarch; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Frodo Baggins and his Uncle Bilbo, and they told the truth, mainly. There was things which they stretched, but mostly they told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was the Lady Galadriel, or Elrond, or maybe Gandalf. The Lady Galadriel – the Lady of Lothlorien, she is – and Elrond, and the wizard Gandalf is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
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