ank the editors of
_The North American Review_, _Harper's Magazine_, _The Century_, _The
Smart Set_, _Munsey's_, _The Out-Door World_, and _The Forum_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I.--VANISHING ROADS
II.--WOMAN AS A SUPERNATURAL BEING
III.--THE LACK OF IMAGINATION AMONG MILLIONAIRES
IV.--THE PASSING OF MRS. GRUNDY
V.--MODERN AIDS TO ROMANCE
VI.--THE LAST CALL
VII.--THE PERSECUTIONS OF BEAUTY
VIII.--THE MANY FACES--THE ONE DREAM
IX.--THE SNOWS OF YESTER-YEAR
X.--THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOSSIP
XI.--THE PASSING AWAY OF THE EDITOR
XII.--THE SPIRIT OF THE OPEN
XIII.--AN OLD AMERICAN TOW-PATH
XIV.--A MODERN SAINT FRANCIS
XV.--THE LITTLE GHOST IN THE GARDEN
XVI.--THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
XVII.--LONDON--CHANGING AND UNCHANGING
XVIII.--THE HAUNTED RESTAURANT
XIX.--THE NEW PYRAMUS AND THISBE
XX.--TWO WONDERFUL OLD LADIES
XXI.--A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION
XXII.--ON RE-READING WALTER PATER
XXIII.--THE MYSTERY OF "FIONA MACLEOD"
XXIV.--FORBES-ROBERTSON: AN APPRECIATION
XXV.--A MEMORY OF FREDERIC MISTRAL
XXVI.--IMPERISHABLE FICTION
XXVII.--THE MAN BEHIND THE PEN
XXVIII.--BULLS IN CHINA-SHOPS
XXIX.--THE BIBLE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Vanishing Roads

I

VANISHING ROADS

Though actually the work of man's hands--or, more properly speaking, the
work of his travelling feet,--roads have long since come to seem so much
a part of Nature that we have grown to think of them as a feature of the
landscape no less natural than rocks and trees. Nature has adopted them
among her own works, and the road that mounts the hill to meet the
sky-line, or winds away into mystery through the woodland, seems to be
veritably her own highway leading us to the stars, luring us to her
secret places. And just as her rocks and trees, we know not how or why,
have come to have for us a strange spiritual suggestiveness, so the
vanishing road has gained a meaning for us beyond its use as the avenue
of mortal wayfaring, the link of communication between village and
village and city and city; and some roads indeed seem so lonely, and so
beautiful in their loneliness, that one feels they were meant to be
travelled only by the soul. All roads indeed lead to Rome, but theirs
also is a more mystical destination, some bourne of which n