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I have collected in this volume such of my more recent short stories as seemed to me to possess the best claim to literary treatment. They are mostly those which have been written more or less to please myself, and not to please the editor of this or that periodical. Others, however, are cast as a sop to Cerberus.

The first on the list, “Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece,” was originally published in the Graphic. I sent it, I confess, in fear and trembling, and was agreeably surprised when I found the editor had the boldness to print it unaltered. Two of the other stories here given to the world, however, met with less good fortune: “The Sixth Commandment” and “The Missing Link.” This is their first public appearance on any stage. They were sent round to every magazine in which they possessed the ghost of a chance; but, as usually happens when one writes anything in which one feels more than ordinary personal interest, they were unanimously declined by the whole press of London. Hitherto, I have been in the habit of cremating in one annual holocaust all such stillborn children of my imagination; henceforth I shall keep their poor little corpses by my side, and embalm them from time to time in an experimental volume of Rejected Efforts.

Of the other pieces here submitted to the reader, “Karen” first appeared in the Graphic; “Pallinghurst Barrow,” in the Illustrated London News; “The Abbé’s Repentance,” in the Contemporary Review; “Claude Tyack’s Ordeal,” “The Pot-boiler,” and “Melissa’s Tour,” in Longmans’ Magazine; “Tom’s Wife,” in the Novel Review; “The Great Ruby Robbery” and “The Conscientious Burglar,” in the Strand Magazine; “A Social Difficulty,” in the Cornhill; “The Chinese Play at the Haymarket” and “My Circular Tour,” in Belgravia; and “The Minor Poet,” in the Speaker. My thanks are due to the editors and proprietors of those periodicals for kind permission to reprint them here.

Many of these stories I like myself. I hope “The Pot-boiler” and “The Minor Poet” may soften the hard heart of the man who reviews me for the National Observer.

G. A.

Hotel du Cap, Antibes.

March, 1893.