BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
VOL. I.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
I. HOMILETIC
II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
III. THE SICK CHAMBER
IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
V. MY DREAM
VI. THE NEW BABY
VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM
IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
XII. THE JOURNEY
XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED
XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
XV. THE OLD CHURCH
XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
Dear Friends,—I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, asyou know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, thatwhatever I say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon;and if you had not by this time learned at least to bear with myoddities, you would not have wanted any more of my teaching. And,indeed, I did not think you would want any more. I thought I had biddenyou farewell. But I am seated once again at my writing-table, to writefor you—with a strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart ofsome curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance, by means of which thewords which I have a habit of whispering over to myself as I writethem, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I cannot see orhear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your presence, I mayspeak the more truly, as man to man.
But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and thatyou have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usuallyhappens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating amore puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in theholes and corners of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one,peeping out at me like a rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing mealmost at the same instant the tail-end of it, and vanishing with acontemptuous thud of its hind feet on the ground. For I must havesuitable regard to the desires of my children. It is a fine thing to beable to give people what they want, if at the same time you can givethem what you want. To give people what they want, would sometimes beto give them only dirt and poison. To give them what you want, might beto set before them something of which they could not eat a mouthful.What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a dish of goodwholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are neitheryoung enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go that willnot do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know about—thathas happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of thing Ilike best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell mesomething that has happened to himself, especially if he will give me apeep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room withthe closed door, and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: