Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/10

x is that of a good memory ; this has stood me in good stead in the present work, for such diaries as I have kept are the reverse of voluminous, recording little but the work of each day — some place visited, or other matter of private interest. Writing one's Recol- lections trams and improves the memory greatly. When thinking over what would be suitable for these pages, either in odd moments of the day or in the silent watches of those nights when the inestim- able boon of sleep is denied, and hour after hour is tolled from neighbouring steeples with ghastly irrita- tion (a terrible time), — it is, I say, at such moments that I have been surprised to find how a face, a rhyme, a scene , or incident, that had long been for- gotten, has been recalled with an accuracy as strange as it was vivid. This may not be a novel experience to others, nor do I offer it as a profound or original observation.

George D. Leslie, whose "Letters to Marco" I hope all my readers have read, and admired for their love of nature and the simple unaffected style in which they are written, is the only friend to whom / have read passages from this book. Though not one of my oldest friends, we were very intimately connected at one time, when we occupied the upper