Well, yes! A one-man show--or is it merely the show of one man?
The only thing that will not be found amongst those Figures and Things
that have passed away, will be Conrad _en pantoufles_. It is a
constitutional inability. _Schlafrock und pantoffeln_! Not that! Never!
. . . I don't know whether I dare boast like a certain South American
general who used to say that no emergency of war or peace had ever found
him "with his boots off"; but I may say that whenever the various
periodicals mentioned in this book called on me to come out and blow the
trumpet of personal opinions or strike the pensive lute that speaks of
the past, I always tried to pull on my boots first. I didn't want to do
it, God knows! Their Editors, to whom I beg to offer my thanks here,
made me perform mainly by kindness but partly by bribery. Well, yes!
Bribery? What can you expect? I never pretended to be better than the
people in the next street, or even in the same street.
This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is as near
as I shall ever come to _deshabille_ in public; and perhaps it will do
something to help towards a better vision of the man, if it gives no more
than a partial view of a piece of his back, a little dusty (after the
process of tidying up), a little bowed, and receding from the world not
because of weariness or misanthropy but for other reasons that cannot be
helped: because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock ticks with
that horrid pitiless solemnity which you must have observed in the
ticking of the hall clock at home.
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