There is nothing to reflect upon, to take home with one, so to speak. I should dislike to give the impression that for this reason I depreciate the act or “look down” on it. Such is not the case. I merely beg, superfluously, perhaps, to state, that it has its place in the world, fulfills its little destiny, and that its destiny has nothing to do with the progress, or even the activity, of human thought. The novels of Mr. Wells, on the other hand, are quite different. I am not going to review them, criticise or appraise them. That has been done, and will be done, by far more able pens than mine. I simply have an irresistible desire to record that whatever one thinks about them they are, after all, first and last, novels about which it is impossible not to think. This seems to me to be a great deal at the outset. I am unable to recall more than three other English-writing novelists of the present day who inspire me with the same sensations. To sit for awhile and reflect on this volume leads me far away from it into a tortuous maze of thought about all kinds of things--about life, about art, about literary style in general, and then about certain specific aspects and corners and byways, disputed boundaries and quaking bogs of these subjects, in particular. The book has been discussed in my presence by several persons, all of whom are unusually intelligent, and I think my only reason for mentioning it is because it got these good minds started, got them going with, to me, distinctly interesting results. The discussions shed a light and also erected a perfect barricade of question marks at the end of every path I have, in considering the matter, attempted to tread.