pired a resolution to live up to it. Shall I
be deemed to lift the veil of private life too roughly if I transcribe
some early entries? "23rd: Dear Kate came; very nice." "25th: Kate is
very delightful." "26th: Kate is a darling girl. _She kissed me_."

Before long, Love's young dream was dispersed by the realities of
Harrow; but the scarlet book continued to receive my daily confidences.
Soon--alas for puerile fickleness!--the name of "Kate" disappears, and
is replaced by rougher appellations, such as "Bob" and "Charlie;"
"Carrots" this, and "Chaw" that. To Harrow succeeds Oxford, and now
more recognizable names begin to appear--"Liddon" and "Holland," "Gore"
and "Milner", and "Lymington."

But through all these personal permutations the continuous Life of the
Diary remained unbroken, and so remains even to the present date. Not a
day is missing. When I have been laid low by any of the rather numerous
ills to which, if to little else, my flesh has been heir, I have always
been able to jot down such pregnant entries as "Temperature 102 deg.;"
"Salicine;" "Boiled Chicken;" "Bath Chair." It is many a year since the
scarlet book was laid aside; but it has had a long line of successors;
and together they contain the record of what I have been, done, seen,
and heard during thirty-eight years of chequered existence. Entertaining
a strong and well-founded suspicion that Posterity would burn these
precious volumes unread, I was moved, some few years ago, to compress
into small compass the little that seemed worth remembering. At that
time my friend Mr. James Payn was already confined to the house by the
beginnings of what proved to be his last illness. His host of friends
did what they could to relieve the tedium of his suffering days; and the
only contribution which I could make was to tell him at my weekly visits
anything interesting or amusing which I collected from the reperusal of
my diary. Greatly to my surprise, he urged me to make these
"Collections" into a book, and to add to them whatever "Recollections"
they might suggest. Acting on this advice, I published during the year
1897 a series of weekly papers in the _Manchester Guardian_. They were
received more kindly than I had any right to expect; and early in 1898 I
reproduced them in the present volume--just too late to offer it, except
in memory, to dear James Payn.

The fortunes of the book, from that time till now, would not interest
the public, but are extremely