_NOCTES AMBROSIANÆ_ 147
SKELETONS AT A FEAST 151
A COMMENTARY UPON BUTLER 156
THE COMMEMORATION 164
THE QUAKER EIRENICON 168




IN A GREEN SHADE

ROUND ABOUT A PREFACE


The title has become equivocal, since there are more green shades in
employment now than were dreamed of by Andrew Marvell. Science is a
great maker of homophones, without respect for the poets. There is,
for instance, the demilune of lined buckram borne by the weak-eyed on
their foreheads, the phylactery of the have-beens--I lay myself open
to be believed a cripple, or to look an old fool. A vivacious reviewer
in _Punch's_ "Booking Office," will have a vision of me as a babbling
elder peering at society from below a green pent. However--I must
risk it. It says exactly what I mean; and what I have written I have
written.

The point is that, having worked hard for a good many years, I can now
consider my latter end under conditions favourable to leisurely and
extended thought, sometimes in a garden made, if rightly made, in my
own image, sometimes in a house which was built aforetime, in a day
when men wrought for posterity as well as for themselves. In such