Magdalene College, Cambridge,

July 14, 1907.






INTRODUCTION





I had intended to allow the records that follow--the records of a
pilgrimage sorely beset and hampered by sorrow and distress--to
speak for themselves. Let me only say that one who makes public a
record so intimate and outspoken incurs, as a rule, a certain
responsibility. He has to consider in the first place, or at least
he cannot help instinctively considering, what the wishes of the
writer would have been on the subject. I do not mean that one who
has to decide such a point is bound to be entirely guided by that.
He must weigh the possible value of the record to other spirits
against what he thinks that the writer himself would have
personally desired. A far more important consideration is what
living people who play a part in such records feel about their
publication. But I cannot help thinking that our whole standard in
such matters is a very false and conventional one. Supposing, for