June 1905.




CHAPTER I



WE know more of the early days of the Pyramids or of ancient
Babylon than we do of our own. The Stone age, the dragons of
the prime, are not more remote from us than is our earliest
childhood. It is not so long ago for any of us; and yet, our
memories of it are but veiled spectres wandering in the mazes
of some foregone existence.

Are we really trailing clouds of glory from afar? Or are our
'forgettings' of the outer Eden only? Or, setting poetry
aside, are they perhaps the quickening germs of all past
heredity - an epitome of our race and its descent? At any
rate THEN, if ever, our lives are such stuff as dreams are
made of. There is no connected story of events, thoughts,
acts, or feelings. We try in vain to re-collect; but the
secrets of the grave are not more inviolable, - for the
beginnings, like the endings, of life are lost in darkness.

It is very difficult to affix a date to any relic of that dim
past. We may have a distinct remembrance of some pleasure,
some pain, some fright, some accident, but the vivid does not
help us to chronicle with accuracy. A year or two makes a