way the child with his ghostly
fancies, became, in course of time, a grown-up person, and ceased to
believe in ghosts, together with many other things that, perhaps, it were
better for a man if he did believe in.

But the memory of that dingy graveyard, and of the shadows that dwelt
therein, came back to me very vividly the other day, for it seemed to me
as though I were a ghost myself, gliding through the silent streets where
once I had passed swiftly, full of life.

Diving into a long unopened drawer, I had, by chance, drawn forth a dusty
volume of manuscript, labelled upon its torn brown paper cover, NOVEL
NOTES. The scent of dead days clung to its dogs'-eared pages; and, as it
lay open before me, my memory wandered back to the summer evenings--not
so very long ago, perhaps, if one but adds up the years, but a long, long
while ago if one measures Time by feeling--when four friends had sat
together making it, who would never sit together any more. With each
crumpled leaf I turned, the uncomfortable conviction that I was only a
ghost, grew stronger. The handwriting was my own, but the words were the
words of a stranger, so that as I read I wondered to myself, saying: did
I ever think this? did I really hope that? did I plan to do this? did I
resolve to be such? does life, then, look so to the eyes of a young man?
not knowing whether to smile or sigh.

The book was a compilation, half diary, half memoranda. In it lay the
record of many musings, of many talks, and out of it--selecting what
seemed suitable, adding, altering, and arranging--I have shaped the
chapters that hereafter follow.

That I have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience, an
exceptionally fussy one. Of the four joint authors, he whom I call
"MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet
of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have
designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may
fairly claim to have made my own by reason of the artistic merit with
which I have embellished it. Indeed, in thus taking a few of his bald
ideas and shaping them into readable form, am I not doing him a kindness,
and thereby returning good for evil? For has he not, slipping from the
high ambition of his youth, sunk ever downward step by step, until he has
become a critic, and, therefore, my natural enemy? Does he not, in the
columns of a certain journal of large pretension but small