by Anthony Hope (Author)

'Quot homines tot sententi ;' so many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps boyhood's glamour hung yet round sea-girt rocks, and 'faery lands forlorn, ' still beckoned me; perhaps I felt that London was too full, the Highlands rather fuller, the Swiss mountains most insufferably crowded of them all. Money can buy company, and it can buy retirement. The latter service I asked now of the moderate wealth with which my poor cousin Tom's death had endowed me.