Excerpt from True Stories of the Past

A preface to a dead friend's book is of the nature of an epitaph. You have to crowd into a short space all you have wished to say in life, and have not said, either from shyness, want of occasion, or because you have never really thought that death was to be reckoned with between you and your friend.

Of course we know we all must die, but still I fancy if the men on whom the tower in Siloam fell had been asked a day before their death, if it were possible the tower could fall on them, they would have answered, No. Tom, Dick and Harry all may die. Kings, emperors and other fellows of that kind quite naturally must lie down in the dust one day. Poets have told us so, and poets, after all, are the writers the world remembers most. You see, the jingle hangs in the ear, just as the song of a mosquito or a gnat makes you remember it has passed, whilst a great privet hawk moth floats by and leaves no sound.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.