Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart. — James Branch Cabell

Dreaming a dream to prize,

Is wishing ghosts to rise;

And, if I had the spell

To call the buried — well,

Which one would I?

Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.

It was not his to choose from what volume or on which page thereof he would read; accident, as it seemed, decided that; but the chance-opened page lay unblurred before him, and he saw it with a clarity denied to other men of his generation.