evil
intention. And it is only for their intentions that men can be held
responsible. The ultimate effects of whatever they do are far beyond
their control. In doing this book my intention was to interest people in
my vision of things which is indissolubly allied to the style in which
it is expressed. In other words I wanted to write a certain amount of
pages in prose, which, strictly speaking, is my proper business. I have
attended to it conscientiously with the hope of being entertaining or at
least not insufferably boring to my readers. I can not sufficiently
insist upon the truth that when I sit down to write my intentions are
always blameless however deplorable the ultimate effect of the act may
turn out to be.

J. C.

1920.

WITHIN THE TIDES

The tales collected in this book have elicited on their appearance two
utterances in the shape of comment and one distinctly critical charge. A
reviewer observed that I liked to write of men who go to sea or live on
lonely islands untrammeled by the pressure of worldly circumstances
because such characters allowed freer play to my imagination which in
their case was only bounded by natural laws and the universal human
conventions. There is a certain truth in this remark no doubt. It is
only the suggestion of deliberate choice that misses its mark. I have
not sought for special imaginative freedom or a larger play of fancy in
my choice of characters and subjects. The nature of the knowledge,
suggestions or hints used in my imaginative work has depended directly
on the conditions of my active life. It depended more on contacts, and
very slight contacts at that, than on actual experience; because my life
as a matter of fact was far from being adventurous in itself. Even now
when I look back on it with a certain regret (who would not regret his
youth?) and positive affection, its colouring wears the sober hue of
hard work and exacting calls of duty, things which in themselves are not
much charged with a feeling of romance. If these things appeal strongly
to me even in retrospect it is, I suppose, because the romantic feeling
of reality was in me an inborn faculty, that in itself may be a curse
but when disciplined by a sense of personal responsibility and a
recognition of the hard facts of existence shared with the rest of
mankind becomes but a point of view from which the very shadows of life
appear endowed with an internal glow. And such romanticism is not a si