Stella Fregelius (Paperback)

Stella Fregelius - A Tale of Three Destinies - H. Rider Haggard - World Classics. This supernatural love story features a device that induces telepathy between sympathetic parties and ultimately leads to communication with the dead. The author feels that he owes some apology to his readers for his boldness in offering to them a modest story which is in no sense a romance of the character that perhaps they expect from him; which has moreover few exciting incidents and no climax of the accustomed order since the end of it only indicates its real beginning. His excuse must be that in the first instance he wrote it purely to please himself and now publishes it in the hope that it may please some others. The problem of such a conflict common enough mayhap did we but know it between a departed and a present personality of which the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure he treated the difficult theme not indeed as he would have wished to do but as best he could. He may explain further that when he drafted this book now some five years ago instruments of the nature of the aerophone were not so much talked of as they are to-day. In fact this aerophone has little to do with his characters or their history and the main motive of its introduction to his pages was to suggest how powerless are all such material means to bring within mortal reach the transcendental and unearthly ends which with their aid were attempted by Morris Monk. These as that dreamer learned must be far otherwise obtained whether in truth and spirit or perchance in visions only.