Novel Notes | Page 2

elders think), "He seems to eat all right."
"Eat!" replied my father in the same penetrating undertone; "if he dies
of anything, it will be of eating."
So my little mother grew less troubled, and, as the days went by, saw
reason to think that my brother angels might consent to do without me
for yet a while longer; and I, putting away the child with his ghostly
fancies, became, in course of time, a grown-up person, and ceased to
believe in ghosts, together with many other things that, perhaps, it were
better for a man if he did believe in.
But the memory of that dingy graveyard, and of the shadows that dwelt
therein, came back to me very vividly the other day, for it seemed to
me as though I were a ghost myself, gliding through the silent streets
where once I had passed swiftly, full of life.
Diving into a long unopened drawer, I had, by chance, drawn forth a
dusty volume of manuscript, labelled upon its torn brown paper cover,
NOVEL NOTES. The scent of dead days clung to its dogs'-eared pages;
and, as it lay open before me, my memory wandered back to the
summer evenings--not so very long ago, perhaps, if one but adds up the
years, but a long, long while ago if one measures Time by
feeling--when four friends had sat together making it, who would never
sit together any more. With each crumpled leaf I turned, the
uncomfortable conviction that I was only a ghost, grew stronger. The
handwriting was my own, but the words were the words of a stranger,
so that as I read I wondered to myself, saying: did I ever think this? did

I really hope that? did I plan to do this? did I resolve to be such? does
life, then, look so to the eyes of a young man? not knowing whether to
smile or sigh.
The book was a compilation, half diary, half memoranda. In it lay the
record of many musings, of many talks, and out of it--selecting what
seemed suitable, adding, altering, and arranging--I have shaped the
chapters that hereafter follow.
That I have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience,
an exceptionally fussy one. Of the four joint authors, he whom I call
"MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet
of sun-scorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have
designated "Brown" I have borrowed but little, and that little I may
fairly claim to have made my own by reason of the artistic merit with
which I have embellished it. Indeed, in thus taking a few of his bald
ideas and shaping them into readable form, am I not doing him a
kindness, and thereby returning good for evil? For has he not, slipping
from the high ambition of his youth, sunk ever downward step by step,
until he has become a critic, and, therefore, my natural enemy? Does he
not, in the columns of a certain journal of large pretension but small
circulation, call me "'Arry" (without an "H," the satirical rogue), and is
not his contempt for the English-speaking people based chiefly upon
the fact that some of them read my books? But in the days of
Bloomsbury lodgings and first-night pits we thought each other clever.
From "Jephson" I hold a letter, dated from a station deep in the heart of
the Queensland bush. "_Do what you like with it, dear boy_," the letter
runs, "_so long as you keep me out of it. Thanks for your
complimentary regrets, but I cannot share them. I was never fitted for a
literary career. Lucky for me, I found it out in time. Some poor devils
don't. (I'm not getting at you, old man. We read all your stuff, and like
it very much. Time hangs a bit heavy, you know, here, in the winter,
and we are glad of almost anything.) This life suits me better. I love to
feel my horse between my thighs, and the sun upon my skin. And there
are the youngsters growing up about us, and the hands to look after,
and the stock. I daresay it seems a very commonplace unintellectual life
to you, but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could
ever do. Besides, there are too many authors as it is. The world is so
busy reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking. You'll tell me,

of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the Press.
You come out here, old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days and
nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved island of
earth, as it were, jutting