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To
My Teacher and Friend George Robert Parkin
SINCE
you are on the other side of the world, my dear Parkin,
I must offer you my new book without your leave. This
is not really so venturesome as it may seem. You never
were one of those aloof and awesome Head Masters, who
exercise a petty reign of terror over the effervescence
of youth; and I cannot recall that we ever tried to
steal a march on you, except on a few occasions in the
history of the school or of your own life, when we wished
to surprise you with some token of our bashful affection.
When this page comes under that
glowing eye, which has since compelled so many audiences,
in so many places larger than any schoolroom, on weightier
matters than any [Page v] school discipline,
let me ask you to recall those occasions long ago, and
to think of this prefatory letter as an echo of that
happy time. I even feel myself lapsing (or more properly
stiffening) into the formal style of an address, to
be read to you, with much stumbling and a quaking heart,
before the assembled school. But I dare say you will
find it none the worse on that account. As you sit now
turning these leaves, whether in London or South Africa,
you must pretend that you are still in the chair behind
the high desk, where we all came for counsel and reproof,
and that here is one of your boys come to tender you
an offering long overdue, making acknowledgement of
most grateful indebtedness never really to be repaid.
For the service you did him is, next to the gift of
life, the greatest that one man can render another.
Those were the days when we
were all young together, whether at Greek or football,
tramping for Mayflowers through the early spring woods,
paddling on the river in intoxicating [Page
vi] Junes, or snowshoeing across bitter drifts
in the perishing December wind, — always under
the leadership of your indomitable ardour. In that golden
age we first realized the kinship of Nature, whose help
is forever unfailing, and whose praise is never outsung.
I must remind you, too, of those hours in teh class-room,
when the Aeneid was often interrupted by the
Idyls of the King or The Blessed Damozel,
and William Morris or Arnold or Mr. Swinburne's latest
lyric ame to us between the lines of Horace.
I shall not fasten upon you
the heavy responsibility of having turned more than
one young scholar aside into the fascinating and headlong
current of contemporary poetry, never to emerge again,
nor of having helped to make anything so doubtful as
a minor bard. It is certain, however, that you gave
us whatever solace and inspiration there is in the classics
and in modern letters, and set our feet in the devious
aisles of the enchanted groves of the Muses. And I for
one have to [Page vii] thank you for
a pleasure in life, almost the only one, that does not
fail.
We learned from you, or we might
have learned, to be zealous, to be fair, to be happy
over our work, to love only what is beautiful and of
good report, and to follow the truth at all hazards.
If you find any good, then, in these pages, take much
of the credit for it to yourself, I beg you. And whatever
you come upon of ill, attribute to that original perversity
for which our grandsires had to make allowance in their
theology, and from which no master in the world can
quite free even his most desirous pupil.
The essays which go to make
up this volume were written at different times during
the past six or seven years. In revising them for publication
in their present form, a good deal that was purely ephemeral
has been cut away; so that while they may not appear
to contain very much that is of great significance,
neither will they, I hope, be found altogether trivial.
Under the circumstances of their
production [Page viii], they could
scarcely follow any coherent and continuous trend of
thought. Perhaps, indeed, it is not to be expected that
a book of essays should do this. They can only have
whatever unity of feeling and outlook attaches to the
writer's philosophy, as it passes from day to day through
the changing pageants of Nature or through the varied
pomps and vanities of this delightful world. And yet,
if I must be my own apologist, perhaps I may be excused
for assuming that no work of the sort, however random
and perishable, will be entirely futile, if it has been
done in the first place with loving sincerity and conviction.
It will have in the final analysis some way of looking
at life, some tendency or preference, which in a more
studied work would be more formal, but not therefore
necessarily more true. It may attract only a handful
of readers; it may not outlive the hour; but after all,
that may be enough, if only it carry with it some hint
of the experience which prompted it.
A book is only written for him
who finds it [Page ix]; and should
carry to the finder some palpable or even intimate revelation
of the man who made it. It is as if, by a tone of the
voice or a turn of the head, a stranger should suddenly
appeal to us as a comrade. And while it is true that
the offices of friendship are not fully accomplished
until we have eaten our bushel of salt together, it
is also certain that the flavour of friendship may be
recognized with the smallest grain. A book may be a
cry in the night, like Carlyle's; or a message from
"the god of the wood," like Emerson's; or
a song of the open, like Whitman's; or the utterance
of a scholar like Newman from the schools of ancient
learning; or it may be no more than the smiling salutation
of a child in the street. let him receive it whom it
may serve.
It is a long way from the little
Canadian town on the St. John, in the early seventies,
to the centres of the world in the beginning of a new
era; but it is good to remember and to take courage.
And while we who always must think of you with a touch
of hero-worship [Page x], look on with
pride at your achievements in that larger workroom of
responisibility to which you have so deservedly come,
— while we kindle as of old at your unflinching
and strenuous eagerness, — I hope that you will
be able to read with satisfaction, and with some little
pleasure, these latest tasks which I bring for your
approval.
School will not keep forever.
By the feel of the sun it must be already past noon.
Before very long the hour must strike for our dismissal
from this pleasant and airy edifice, a summons less
welcome than the four o'clock cathedral bell in that
leafy Northern city in old days, and we shall all go
scattering forth for the Great Re-creation. Before that
time arrives, only let me know that, in your impartial
and exacting judgment, I have not altogether failed,
and I shall await the Finals with more confidence than
most mortals dare enjoy [Page xi].
B.
C.
New York, June, 1903.
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