reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and 'The Lake,'
too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range
and power, and criticism was baffled by the division of stories written
at the same time and coming out of the same happy inspiration, one that
could hardly fail to beget stories in the mind of anybody prone to
narrative--the return of a man to his native land, to its people, to
memories hidden for years, forgotten, but which rose suddenly out of the
darkness, like water out of the earth when a spring is tapped.

Some chance words passing between John Eglinton and me as we returned
home one evening from Professor Dowden's were enough. He spoke, or I
spoke, of a volume of Irish stories; Tourguéniev's name was mentioned,
and next morning--if not the next morning, certainly not later than a
few mornings after--I was writing 'Homesickness,' while the story of
'The Exile' was taking shape in my mind. 'The Exile' was followed by a
series of four stories, a sort of village odyssey. 'A Letter to Rome' is
as good as these and as typical of my country. 'So on He Fares' is the
one that, perhaps, out of the whole volume I like the best, always
excepting 'The Lake,' which, alas, was not included, but which belongs
so strictly to the aforesaid stories that my memory includes it in the
volume.

In expressing preferences I am transgressing an established rule of
literary conduct, which ordains that an author must always speak of his
own work with downcast eyes, excusing its existence on the ground of his
own incapacity. All the same an author's preferences interest his
readers, and having transgressed by telling that these Irish stories lie
very near to my heart, I will proceed a little further into literary
sin, confessing that my reason for liking 'The Lake' is related to the
very great difficulty of the telling, for the one vital event in the