“My name is Nobody,” he replied to my question; and after that night I saw him no more during our stay on the island.

The privileges granted by two governments to the owner of the island will last for fifty years more.  And who knows what may happen to the world in fifty years?

* * * * *

COULSON KERNAHAN

A Dead Man’s Diary

Coulson Kernahan, born at Ilfracombe, England, Aug. 1, 1858, is a son of Dr. James Kernahan, M.A.  He has contributed largely to periodicals, and has written in many veins, alternating serious and religious works with sensational novels, and literary criticism with humour and sport.  It is by his imaginative booklets—­now collected in one volume under the title of “Visions”—­that he is best known.  These booklets have circulated literally “by the million,” and have been translated into no fewer than sixteen languages, including Chinese.  “A Dead Man’s Diary” appeared anonymously in 1890, and attracted unusual attention, the authorship being attributed, among others, to Harold Frederic and Robert Buchanan.  Since then “A Dead Man’s Diary”—­of which Mr. J.M.  Barrie, in reviewing it, said, “The vigour of the book is great, and the author has such a gift of intensity that upon many readers it will have mesmeric effect”—­has gone through innumerable editions, in England and in America.

I.—­The Ghost of the Past

Some years ago I became so seriously ill that I was pronounced dying, and, finally, dead.  Dead to all intents and purposes I remained for two days, when, to the astonishment of the physicians, I exhibited symptoms of returning vitality, and in a week was convalescent.

Of the moments preceding my passing I recollect only that there came over me a strange and sudden sense of loss, as though some life-element had gone out from me.  Of pain there was none, nor any mental anxiety.

I recollect only an ethereal lightness of limb, and a sense of soul-emancipation and peace, a sense of soul-emancipation such as one might feel were he to awaken on a sunny summer morning to find that sorrow and sin were gone from the world for ever, a peace ample and restful as the hallowed hush and awe of twilight, without the twilight’s tender pain.

Then I seemed to be sinking slowly and steadily through still depths of sun-steeped, light-filled waters that sang in my ears with a sound like a sweet, sad sobbing and soaring of music, and through which there swam up to me, in watered vistas of light, scenes of sunny seas and shining shores where smiling isles stretched league beyond league afar.

And so life ebbed away, until there came a time when the outward and deathward-setting tide seemed to reach its climax, and when I felt myself swept shoreward and lifeward again on the inward-setting tide of that larger life into which I had died.