Unaddressed Letters
by Anonymous, Frank Athelstane Swettenham
Chapter 1 of 38 PREFACE
- Running time
- 7 h 10 min
- Language
- English
- Readers
- Amy Gramour, Eva Davis (d. 2025), Nemo
Chapters
About this recording
“I had a friend who loved me;” but he has gone, and the “great gulf” is between us. After his death, I received a packet of manuscript with these few words:—“What I have written may appeal to you because of our friendship, and because, when you come to read them, you will seek to grasp, in these apparent confidences, an inner meaning that to the end will elude you. If you think others, not the many but the few, might find here any answer to their unuttered questionings, any fellowship of sympathy in those experiences which are the milestones of our lives, then use the letters as you will, but without my name. I shall have gone, and the knowledge of my name would make no one either wiser or happier.”
The writer was, by trade, a diplomatist; by inclination, a sportsman with literary and artistic tastes; by force of circumstances he was a student of many characters, and in some sense a cynic. He was also a traveler—not a great traveler, but he knew a good deal of Europe, a little of America, much of India and the further East. He spent some time in this neighborhood, and was much interested in the country and its people. There is an Eastern atmosphere about many of the letters, and…