The stories I have not told you, that I am going to tell you
one day, I would that you judge me by those.
They are so beautiful; you will say so; over them, you will laugh
and cry with me.
They come into my brain unbidden, they clamour to be written, yet
when I take my pen in hand they are gone. It is as though they were
shy of publicity, as though they would say to me--"You alone, you
shall read us, but you must not write us; we are too real, too true.
We are like the thoughts you cannot speak. Perhaps a little later,
when you know more of life, then you shall tell us."
Next to these in merit I would place, were I writing a critical
essay on myself, the stories I have begun to write and that remain
unfinished, why I cannot explain to myself. They are good stories,
most of them; better far than the stories I have accomplished.
Another time, perhaps, if you care to listen, I will tell you the
beginning of one or two and you shall judge. Strangely enough, for
I have always regarded myself as a practical, commonsensed man, so
many of these still-born children of my mind I find, on looking
through the cupboard where their thin bodies lie, are ghost stories.
I suppose the hope of ghosts is with us all.
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