NOVEMBER 



103 



now lies hidden in the holy calm of the churchyard? 

 Here are the letters which were so loved by him whom 

 .we all loved so well ; here are pictures and ribbons, and 

 books with marks on every page. Who can now read 

 and decipher them ? Who can gather together the faded 

 and broken leaves of this rose, and endow them once 

 more with living fragrance? The flames which among 

 the Greeks received the body of the departed for fiery 

 destruction the flames into which the ancients cast 

 everything that had been most dear to the living are 

 still the safest resting-places for such relics. With 

 trembling hesitation the bereaved friend reads the pages 

 which no eye had ever seen, save the one now closed for 

 ever ; and when he has satisfied himself by a rapid glance 

 that these pages and letters contain nothing which the 

 world calls important, he throws them hastily on the 

 glowing coals ; they flame up, and are gone. 



' From such flames the following pages were saved. 

 They were intended at first for the friends only of the lost 

 one; but as they have found friends amongst strangers 

 they may, since so it is to be, wander forth again into the 

 wide world.' 



I began my task, turned over the old mouldy papers 

 of long, long ago, and came across a bundle of the early 

 love-letters of my father and mother. So long as I live 

 I cannot allow them to be consigned to the flames, as 

 Professor Max Muller recommends. They are so simple, 

 so touching and interesting in their old-world language, 

 that my first impulse was to string them together 

 anonymously, adding the little tale of the love affair as 

 perhaps no one but I could do. But even without names 

 this might possibly have shocked the taste of people who 

 are sensitive on the subject of letters. I am not one of 

 those who object to the publishing of love-letters, given 

 sufficient time for personal knowledge and recollection of 



