Chapter I: Front Matter

Vanishing Roads And Other Essays

By

Richard Le Gallienne

1915

TO

ROBERT HOBART DAVIS

DEAR BOB: It is quite a long time now since you and I first caught sight of each other and became fellow wayfarers on this Vanishing Road of the world. O quite a lot of years now, Bob! Yet I control my tendency to shiver at their number from the fact that we have travelled them, always within hailing distance of each other, I with the comfortable knowledge that near by I had so good a comrade, so true a friend.

For this once, by your leave, we won't "can" the sentiment,--to use an idiom in which you are the master-artist on this continent,--but I, at least, will luxuriate in retrospect, as I write your name by way of dedication to this volume of essays, for some of which your quick-firing mind is somewhat more than editorially responsible. You were one of the first to make me welcome to a country of which, even as a boy, I used prophetically to dream as my "promised land," little knowing that it was indeed to be my home, the home of my spirit, as well as the final resting-place of my household gods; and, having you so early for my friend, is it to be wondered at if I soon came to regard the American humourist as the noblest work of God?

There is yet, I trust, much left of the Vanishing Road for us to travel together; and I hope that, when the time comes for us both to vanish over the horizon line, we may exit still within hail of each other,--so that we may have a reasonable chance of hitting the trail together on the next route, whatever it is going to be.

Always yours,
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

Rowayton, December 25, 1914.

For their discernment in giving the following essays their first opportunity with the reader the writer desires to thank the editors of _The North American Review_, _Harper's Magazine_, _The Century_, _The Smart Set_, _Munsey's_, _The Out-Door World_, and _The Forum_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I.--VANISHING ROADS
II.--WOMAN AS A SUPERNATURAL BEING
III.--THE LACK OF IMAGINATION AMONG MILLIONAIRES
IV.--THE PASSING OF MRS. GRUNDY
V.--MODERN AIDS TO ROMANCE
VI.--THE LAST CALL
VII.--THE PERSECUTIONS OF BEAUTY
VIII.--THE MANY FACES--THE ONE DREAM
IX.--THE SNOWS OF YESTER-YEAR
X.--THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOSSIP
XI.--THE PASSING AWAY OF THE EDITOR
XII.--THE SPIRIT OF THE OPEN
XIII.--AN OLD AMERICAN TOW-PATH
XIV.--A MODERN SAINT FRANCIS
XV.--THE LITTLE GHOST IN THE GARDEN
XVI.--THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
XVII.--LONDON--CHANGING AND UNCHANGING
XVIII.--THE HAUNTED RESTAURANT
XIX.--THE NEW PYRAMUS AND THISBE
XX.--TWO WONDERFUL OLD LADIES
XXI.--A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION
XXII.--ON RE-READING WALTER PATER
XXIII.--THE MYSTERY OF "FIONA MACLEOD"
XXIV.--FORBES-ROBERTSON: AN APPRECIATION
XXV.--A MEMORY OF FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL
XXVI.--IMPERISHABLE FICTION
XXVII.--THE MAN BEHIND THE PEN
XXVIII.--BULLS IN CHINA-SHOPS
XXIX.--THE BIBLE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Vanishing Roads