THE GHOST-SHIP

by Richard Middleton



Thanks are due to the Editors of _The Century_,
_English Review_, _Vanity Fair_, and _The Academy_, for
permission to reproduce most of the stories in this volume.




Preface

The other day I said to a friend, "I have just been reading in proof
a volume of short stories by an author named Richard Middleton. He is
dead. It is an extraordinary book, and all the work in it is full of
a quite curious and distinctive quality. In my opinion it is very
fine work indeed."

It would be so simple if the business of the introducer or
preface-writer were limited to such a straightforward, honest, and
direct expression of opinion; unfortunately that is not so. For most
of us, the happier ones of the world, it is enough to say "I like
it," or "I don't like it," and there is an end: the critic has to
answer the everlasting "Why?" And so, I suppose, it is my office,
in this present instance, to say why I like the collection of tales
that follows.