First printed October 1897. Reprinted (twice) November 1897.

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1

PREFACE
N

UNLESS you are very keenly set upon
reading to yourself, I think I should advise
you to ask some one to read these pieces
aloud, not too many at a time. And I
want you to understand that there is a kind
of poetry that is finer far than anything
here: poetry to which this book is, in the
old-fashioned phrase, simply a “stepping-
stone.” When you feel, as I hope some
day you will feel, that these pages no
longer satisfy, then you must turn to the
better thing

E. V. L.