Essays on Life 



easy corollaries crops up no matter in what 

 direction we allow our thoughts to wander. 

 And we meet instances of transmigration of 

 body as well as of soul. I do not mean that 

 both body and soul have transmigrated to- 

 gether, far from it ; but that, as we can often 

 recognise a transmigrated mind in an alien 

 body, so we not less often see a body that is 

 clearly only a transmigration, linked on to 

 some one else's new and alien soul. We meet 

 people every day whose bodies are evidently 

 those of men and women long dead, but 

 whose appearance we know through their por- 

 traits. We see them going about in omnibuses, 

 railway carriages, and in all public places. 

 The cards have been shuffled, and they have 

 drawn fresh lots in life and nationalities, but 

 any one fairly well up in mediaeval and last 

 century portraiture knows them at a glance. 



Going down once towards Italy I saw a 

 young man in the train whom I recognised, 

 only he seemed to have got younger. He was 

 with a friend, and his face was in continual play, 

 but for some little time I puzzled in vain to 



recollect where it was that I had seen him 



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