Friends I Have Made — George Manville Fenn

May I ask your patience while I introduce myself -- the writer of the following chapters? I am sitting before the looking-glass at the end of my room as I write, I not from any vanity, you will readily perceive that as you read on -- but so that I may try and reflect with my ink the picture that I wish to present to you of a rather sad -- I only say rather, for, upon the whole, I am very cheerful, -- thin, pale, careworn-looking woman, with hair that has long been scant and grey -- whiter, perhaps, than that of many people at eight-and-forty. Eight-and-forty! What a great age that seems to the young; and yet how few the years, save in one period of my life, have appeared to me! At times I can hardly realise that I am decidedly elderly, so busy has been my life, so swiftly has it glided away, thinking so much as I have of other people and their lives as well as of my own.