INTRODUCTION. 



WHILE recognising the diversity of men, every one from 

 his fellow, we cannot but notice certain characteristics 

 prevailing among a number, of sufficient importance to 

 warrant our grouping such as exemplify them into distinct 

 classes. Among these there is an ambitionless sort who, 

 holding that it all comes to the skull and cross-bones in 

 the end, choose to live in the fashion that is most con- 

 venient to a peaceable temperament, regarding in a moral- 

 ising attitude of mind such as like to raise a dust in the 

 world, and thereby unconsciously admitting a certain 

 inferiority of character due to the absence of the more 

 heartful and courageous qualities. By them, indeed, the 

 feverish dice-throwing with death is avoided, and the 

 bewildering confusion that besets men of affairs; yet there 

 will also be found to be amissing the keen zest in life, the 

 swelling spirit of the strong man rejoicing to run a race. 

 But of the two ways of life, though one is the more 

 philosophic, we must allow that the other is more human; 

 and the tale of those who follow the latter will perhaps 

 make a more curious book for the " lover of strange souls." 

 Meanwhile he who reads in the other volume, having the 

 love of gentle souls in his heart, will be enlightened as to 

 some of the quieter ways of humanity where more slowly 

 measured music is sung on a lower key to a less brilliant 



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