2 STRAY -AW AYS 



it is not more entertaining to reverse the process, 

 and, assembling one's vagrant memories on whatever 

 subject may be suggested, to present what un- 

 sympathetic people might hint was hetion, as fact ? 



This last reflection does not, I make haste to explain, 

 apply to this casual collection of by-products. What- 

 ever merit they may possess is due to their candour, 

 and to the fact that each represents an impulse, 

 yielded to without resistance, an inspiring interval 

 of escape from the duty of the moment. 



I have attempted no classification of these recap- 

 tured Stray-aways. Many of them had strayed 

 almost out of my recollection; Martin Ross's two 

 earliest essays, " A Delegate of the National League," 

 and "Cheops in Connemara," had, indeed, wandered 

 so far afield that only after sedulous search in that 

 ultimate fold, the British Museum, were they shep- 

 herded home. Of her two stories, one of them, " Two 

 Sunday Afternoons," is now printed for the first time. 

 It was suggested to her by what she had seen and 

 heard in Dublin, when little more than a child, during 

 the dark time of conspiracy of "The Invincibles " ; and 

 when she had written it, it seemed to her too sordid 

 and too tragic, and she put it away and gave up the 

 intention of publishing it. In this volume, however, 

 I have wished to include all of her writings that are 

 not already printed in one or other of our books, and, 

 with but one or two exceptions, of work begun, but 

 left perforce unfinished, I believe I have succeeded. I 

 have, as far as is possible in joint work so closely 

 interwoven as ours, indicated those articles for which 

 wc were individually responsible, and I have in some 

 cases been able to give the dates of their original 

 publication. 



Of the chapters that describe our wanderings 

 " In the State of Denmark," it may be said that 



