FOREWORD



This little volume might be called 'Echoes from the land of youthful
imaginings'; or 'Ghosts of old dreams.' It has been compiled at the
request of Messrs. Gay and Hancock (my only authorised publishers in
Great Britain), and contains verses written in my early youth, and
which never before (with the exception, perhaps, of three or four)
have been placed in book form.

Given the poetical temperament, and a lonely environment, with few
distractions, youthful imagination is sure to express itself in
mournful wails and despairing moans. Such wails and moans will be
found to excess in this little book, and will serve to show better
than any amount of common-sense reasoning, how fleeting are the
sorrows of youth, and how slight the foundation on which the young
build towers of despair.

In the days when these verses were written, each little song
represented a few dollars (to my emaciated purse), and so the
slightest experience of my own, or of any friend, with every passing
mood, every trivial happening, was utilised by my imaginative and
thrifty muse.

That the writer has always possessed robust health, and has lived to
a good age, is proof positive that the verses are not all expressions
of personal experiences, since no human being could have borne such
continual agonies and retained life and reason.