ndly nature.

One would think that I am the proper person to throw a light on the
matter; but in truth I find that it isn't so easy. It is pleasant to
remember that nobody had charged him with fraudulent purposes or looked
down on him as a charlatan; but apart from that he was supposed to be
all sorts of things: a clever screen, a mere device, a "personator," a
familiar spirit, a whispering "daemon." I myself have been suspected of
a meditated plan for his capture.

That is not so. I made no plans. The man Marlow and I came together in
the casual manner of those health-resort acquaintances which sometimes
ripen into friendships. This one has ripened. For all his assertiveness
in matters of opinion he is not an intrusive person. He haunts my hours
of solitude, when, in silence, we lay our heads together in great
comfort and harmony; but as we part at the end of a tale I am never sure
that it may not be for the last time. Yet I don't think that either of
us would care much to survive the other. In his case, at any rate, his
occupation would be gone and he would suffer from that extinction,
because I suspect him of some vanity. I don't mean vanity in the
Solomonian sense. Of all my people he's the one that has never been a
vexation to my spirit. A most discreet, understanding man....

Even before appearing in book-form "Youth" was very well received. It
lies on me to confess at last, and this is as good a place for it as
another, that I have been all my life--all my two lives--the spoiled
adopted child of Great Britain and even of the Empire; for it was
Australia that gave me my first command. I break out into this
declaration not because of a lurking tendency to megalomania, but, on
the contrary, as a man who has no very notable illusions about himself.
I follow the instinct of vain-glory and humility natural to all mankind.
For it can hardly be denied that it is not their own deserts that men
are most proud of, but rather of their prodigious luck, of their
marvellous fortune: of that in their lives for which thanks and
sacrifices must be offered on the altars of the inscrutable gods.

Heart of Darkness also received a certain amount of notice from the
first; and of its origins this much may be said: it is well known that
curious men go prying into all sorts of places (where they have no
business) and come out of them with all kinds of spoil. This story, and
one other, not in this volume, are all the spoil I brought ou