As I read them over, the people
and the events therein described were recalled vividly to my
mind - events which I had forgotten, people whom I had
forgotten - events and people all crowded out of my memory for
many years by the pressure of family cares, and the succession of
changes in our stations, by anxiety during Indian campaigns, and
the constant readjustment of my mind to new scenes and new
friends.
And so, in the delicious quiet of the Autumn days at Nantucket,
when the summer winds had ceased to blow and the frogs had ceased
their pipings in the salt meadows, and the sea was wondering
whether it should keep its summer blue or change into its winter
grey, I sat down at my desk and began to write my story.
Looking out over the quiet ocean in those wonderful November
days, when a peaceful calm brooded over all things, I gathered up
all the threads of my various experiences and wove them together.
But the people and the lands I wrote about did not really exist
for me; they were dream people and dream lands. I wrote of them
as they had appeared to me in those early years, and, strange as
it may seem, I did not once stop to think if the people and the
lands still existed.
