Excerpt from PatchworkIt is the custom of novelists to-day, even when writing obviously of public men or women, glibly to inform their readers that these characters are entirely imaginary&46; Whether such a fiction expresses a secret wish that they had indeed been creatures of the brain and not of the flesh, I do not know&46; I would merely say that it is not a fiction in which I would myself indulge&46; It would have been quite impossible, in writing of that university from which I have so recently and so reluctantly departed, to banish from my memory the figures which coloured its stage so vividly, to try to shut from my ears the echo of their laughter and their talk&46; And so I may as we 9781331270546