Tracks of a Rolling Stone

Transcribed from the 1905 Smith, Elder, & Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Second proofed by Margaret Price.
BY THE HONOURABLE HENRY J. COKE
AUTHOR OF ‘A RIDE OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS’ ‘CREEDS OF THE DAY’ ETC.
WITH A PORTRAIT
SECOND EDITION
LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1905
TO MY DAUGHTER SYBIL
The First Edition of this book was written, from beginning to end, in the short space of five months, without the aid of diary or notes, beyond those cited as such from a former work.
The Author, having no expectation that his reminiscences would be received with the kind indulgence of which this Second Edition is the proof, with diffidence ventured to tell so many tales connected with his own unimportant life as he has done. Emboldened by the reception his ‘Tracks’ have met with, he now adds a few stories which he trusts may further amuse its readers.
June 1905.
We know more of the early days of the Pyramids or of ancient Babylon than we do of our own. The Stone age, the dragons of the prime, are not more remote from us than is our earliest childhood. It is not so long ago for any of us; and yet, our memories of it are but veiled spectres wandering in the mazes of some foregone existence.
Are we really trailing clouds of glory from afar? Or are our ‘forgettings’ of the outer Eden only? Or, setting poetry aside, are they perhaps the quickening germs of all past heredity—an epitome of our race and its descent? At any rate then , if ever, our lives are such stuff as dreams are made of. There is no connected story of events, thoughts, acts, or feelings. We try in vain to re-collect; but the secrets of the grave are not more inviolable,—for the beginnings, like the endings, of life are lost in darkness.