The
dear shadows rise up around him, he says; he lives in the past again. It
is to-day which appears vague and visionary. We humbler writers cannot
create Fausts, or raise up monumental works that shall endure for all
ages; but our books are diaries, in which our own feelings must of
necessity be set down. As we look to the page written last month, or ten
years ago, we remember the day and its events; the child ill, mayhap, in
the adjoining room, and the doubts and fears which racked the brain as
it still pursued its work; the dear old friend who read the commencement
of the tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in ours no more. I own
for my part that, in reading pages which this hand penned formerly, I
often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see;
but that past day; that bygone page of life's history; that tragedy,
comedy it may be, which our little home company was enacting; that
merry-making which we shared; that funeral which we followed; that
bitter, bitter grief which we buried.
And, such being the state of my mind, I pray gentle readers to deal
kindly with their humble servant's manifold shortcomings, blunders, and
slips of memory. As sure as I read a page of my own composition, I find
a fault or two, half a dozen.
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