Memories and Portraits

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - THIS volume of papers unconnected as they are it will be better to read through from the beginning rather than dip into at random. A certain thread of meaning binds them. Memories of childhood and youth portraits of those who have gone before us in the battle - taken together they build up a face that I have loved long since and lost awhile the face of what was once myself. This has come by accident; I had no design at first to be autobiographical; I was but led away by the charm of beloved memories and by regret for the irrevocable dead; and when my own young face (which is a face of the dead also) began to appear in the well as by a kind of magic I was the first to be surprised at the occurrence. My grandfather the pious child my father the idle eager sentimental youth I have thus unconsciously exposed. Of their descendant the person of to-day I wish to keep the secret: not because I love him better but because with him I am still in a business partner-ship and cannot divide interests.