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FTER "She" had been fairly launched and the proofs of "Jess" passed for press, I started, in January, 1887, on a journey to Egypt. From a boy ancient Egvpt had fascinated me, and I had read everything concerning it on which I could lay hands. Now I was possessed by a great desire to see it for myself and to write a romance on the subject of Cleopatra—a sufficiently ambitious project.

A friend of mine, who is a mystic of the first water, amused me very much not long ago by forwarding to me a list of my previous incarnations, or rather of three of them, which had been revealed to him in some mysterious way. Two of these were Egyptian, one as a noble in the time of Pepi II., who lived somewhere about 4000, and the second as one of the minor Pharaohs. In the third, according to him, I was a Norseman of the seventh century, who was one of the first to sail to the Nile, whence he returned but to die in sight of his old home. After that, saith the prophet, I slumbered for twelve hundred years until my present life.

O cannot say that I have been converted to my friend's perfectly sincere beliefs, since the reincarnation business seems to me to be quite insusceptible of proof. If it could be proved, how much more interesting it would make our lives! But that, I think, will never happen, even if it be true that we return again to these glimpses of the moon, which, like everything else, is possible.

Still, it is a fact that some men have a strong affinity for certain lands and periods of history, which of course may be explained by the circumstance that their direct ancestors dwelt in those lands and at those periods. Thus I love the Norse people of the Saga and pre-Saga times. But then I have good reason to believe that my forefathers were Danes. I am, however, unable to trace any Egyptian ancestor—if such existed at all it is too long ago.

However these things may be, with the old Norse and the old Egyptians I am at home. I can enter into their thoughts and feelings; I can even understand their theologies. I have a respect for Thor and Odin, I venerate Isis, and always feel inclined to bow to the moon!

Whatever the reason, I seem to myself to understand the Norse folk of anywhere about 800, and the Egyptians from Menes down to the Ptolemaic period, much better than I understand the people of the age in which I live. They are more familiar to me. They interest me much more. For instance, I positively loathe the Georgian period, about which I can never even bring myself to read. On the other hand, I have the greatest sympathy with savages, Zulus for instance, with whom I always got on extremely well. Perchance my mystical friend has left a savage incarnation out of his list.

For these reasons I know well that I could never be a success as a modern novelist. I can see the whole thing; it goes on under my eyes, and as a magistrate and in other ways I am continually in touch with it. I could write of it also if I could bring myself to the task. I would undertake to produce a naturalistic novel that would sell