And now, upon this evening, a little sobered by the thought that this is the fourth October which has seen this hand writing that which shall attain the authority of print, I sit down to begin an essay which is to be written leisurely as recreation and not as work.  I need not finish this essay, unless I choose, for six weeks to come:  so I have plenty of time, and I shall never have to write under pressure.  That is pleasant.  And I write under another feeling, more pleasing and encouraging still.  I think that in these lines I am addressing many unknown friends, who, though knowing nothing more of me than they can learn from pages which I have written, have come gradually not to think of me as a stranger.  I wish here to offer my thanks to many whose letters, though they were writing only to a shadow, have spoken in so kindly a fashion of the writer’s slight productions, that they have given me much enjoyment in the reading, and much encouragement to go on.  To all my correspondents, whether named or nameless, I now, in a moral sense, extend a friendly hand.  As to the question sometimes put, who the writer is, that is of no consequence.  But as to what he is, I think, intelligent readers of his essays, you will gradually and easily see that.

It is a great thing to write leisurely, and with a general feeling of kindliness and satisfaction with everybody; but there is a further reason why one should set to work at once.  I feel I must write now, before my subject loses its interest; and before the multitude of thoughts, such as they are, which have been clustering round it since it presented itself this afternoon in that walk through the woods, have faded away.  It is an unhappy thing, but it is the fact with many men, that if you do not seize your fancies when they come to you, and preserve them upon the written page, you lose them altogether.  They go away, and never come back.  A little while ago I pulled out a drawer in this table whereon I write; and I took out of it a sheet of paper, on which there are written down various subjects for essays.  Several are marked with a large cross; these are the essays which are beyond the reach of fate:  they are written and printed.  Several others have no cross; these are the subjects of essays which are yet to be written.  But upon four of those subjects I look at once with interest and sorrow.  I remember when I wrote down their names, what a vast amount, as I fancied, I had to say about them:  and all experience failed to make me feel that unless those thoughts were seized and chronicled at once, they would go away and never come back again.  How rich the subjects appeared to me, I well remember!  Now they are lifeless, stupid things, of which it is impossible to make anything.  Before, they were like a hive, buzzing with millions of bees.  Now they are like the empty hive, when the life and stir and bustle of the bees are gone.  O friendly reader, what a loss it was to you, that the writer