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The Ghost Ship
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Ship, by Richard Middleton This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Ghost Ship
Author: Richard Middleton
Release Date: February 11, 2004 [EBook #11045]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GHOST SHIP ***
Produced by Tom Harris
THE GHOST-SHIP
by Richard Middleton
Thanks are due to the Editors of _The Century_, _English Review_, _Vanity Fair_, and _The Academy_, for permission to reproduce most of the stories in this volume.
Preface
The other day I said to a friend, "I have just been reading in proof a volume of short stories by an author named Richard Middleton. He is dead. It is an extraordinary book, and all the work in it is full of a quite curious and distinctive quality. In my opinion it is very fine work indeed."
It would be so simple if the business of the introducer or preface-writer were limited to such a straightforward, honest, and direct expression of opinion; unfortunately that is not so. For most of us, the happier ones of the world, it is enough to say "I like it," or "I don't like it," and there is an end: the critic has to answer the everlasting "Why?" And so, I suppose, it is my office, in this present instance, to say why I like the collection of tales that follows.
I think that I have found a hint as to the right answer in two of these stories. One is called "The Story of a Book," the other