ory is mainly made
memorable to me by the fact that it was my first contribution to
_Blackwood's Magazine_ and that it led to my personal acquaintance with
Mr. William Blackwood whose guarded appreciation I felt nevertheless to
be genuine, and prized accordingly. Karain was begun on a sudden impulse
only three days after I wrote the last line of "The Nigger," and the
recollection of its difficulties is mixed up with the worries of the
unfinished Return, the last pages of which I took up again at the time;
the only instance in my life when I made an attempt to write with both
hands at once as it were.

Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that The Return is a left-handed
production. Looking through that story lately I had the material
impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in the loud
drumming of a furious rain-shower. It was very distracting. In the
general uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the stout
and distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for the
remainder of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a sort of
dismal wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any pages of
mine. Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my attempt;
and it was worth while, if only to see of what excesses I was capable in
that sort of virtuosity. In this connection I should like to confess my
surprise on finding that notwithstanding all its apparatus of analysis
the story consists for the most part of physical impressions;
impressions of sound and sight, railway station, streets, a trotting
horse, reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for their own
sake and combined with a sublimated description of a desirable middle
class town-residence which somehow manages to produce a sinister effect.
For the rest any kind word about The Return (and there have been such
words said at different times) awakens in me the liveliest gratitude,
for I know how much the writing of that fantasy has cost me in sheer
toil, in temper and in disillusion.

J. C.

LORD JIM

When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I
had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work
starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's control. One or
two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse
them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They
argued that no man could have been expected to talk