One word as to the characters depicted. Let me say straight out and at once that, with one single exception, where permission has been sought and granted, not one is meant as a photograph. Nearly all, it is true, I have done my best to draw from the life; but, after the fashion of most writers, I suppose, from the life of two, three, four models at once, one suggesting the eyes, as it were, of my picture-person; another the nose; others again the mouth or hands; and always in the hope of representing “not what Life has made already,” as the French poet puts it, “but what she might have made.” So that, to those ever-present clever folk, who, in reading the following pages, may find themselves able to point out portraits here and there, I take this opportunity of humbly suggesting that they should give those good keen eyes of theirs just a little further exercise; and, having made the discovery that any loaf, however badly mixed and baked, does really presuppose some growing grain, should go on to remark that, after all, a paddock of wheat is not really one and the same thing as a bit of brown bread.
Clifton, Christchurch, N.Z.
