"Everybody k knows in a general way that the finest place in the world is or alas was the Dutch borough of Vondervotteimittiss. Yet as it lies some distance from any of the main roads being in a somewhat out-of-the-way situation there are perhaps very few of my readers who have ever paid it a visit. For the benefit of those who have not therefore it will be only proper that I should enter into some account of it. And this is indeed the more necessary as with the hope of enlisting public sympathy in behalf of the inhabitants I design here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so lately occurred within its limits."