antsey MarjoryUpdated at Nov 10, 2020, 03:10
An interesting story. About antsey Marjory.
I have thought myself justified in printing the following narrative, found
among the papers of my dead friend, Douglas Cameron, who left me
discretion to deal with them as I saw fit. It was written indeed, as its
opening words imply, rather for his own solace and relief than with the
expectation that it would be read by any other. But, painful and intimate
as it is in parts, I cannot think that any harm will be done by printing it
now, with some necessary alterations in the names of the characters
chiefly concerned.
Before, however, leaving the story to speak for itself, I should like to
state, in justice to my friend, that during the whole of my acquaintance
with him, which began in our college days, I never saw anything to
indicate the morbid timidity and weakness of character that seem to have
marked him as a boy. Reserved he undoubtedly was, with a taste for
solitude that made him shrink from the society of all but a small circle,
and with a sensitive and shy nature which prevented him from doing
himself complete justice; but he was very capable of holding his own on
occasion, and in his disposition, as I knew it, there was no want of moral
courage, nor any trace of effeminacy.
How far he may have unconsciously exaggerated such failings in the
revelation of his earlier self, or what the influence of such an experience
as he relates may have done to strengthen the moral fibre, are points on
which I can express no opinion, any more than I can pledge myself to the
credibility of the supernatural element of his story.
It may be that only in the boy's overwrought imagination, the innocent
Child-spirit cam