I had no trouble with the title though--"Lichens." I have wondered the thing was never used before. Lichens, variegated, beautiful, though on the most arid foundations, half fungoid, half vernal--the very name for a booklet of modern verse. And that, of course, decided the key of the cover and disposed of three or four pages. A fly-leaf, a leaf with "Lichens" printed fair and beautiful a little to the left of the centre, then a title-page--"Lichens. By H.G. Wells. London: MDCCCXCV. Stephen Llewellyn." Then a restful blank page, and then--the Dedication. It was the dedication stopped me. The title-page, it is true, had some points of difficulty. Should the Christian name be printed in full or not, for instance; but it had none of the fatal fascination of the dedicatory page. I had, so to speak, to look abroad among the ranks of men, and make one of those fretful forgotten millions--immortal. It seemed a congenial task.
It was only this morning that I realised the magnitude of my accumulations. Ever since then--it was three months ago--I have been elaborating this Dedication. I turned the pile over, idly at first. Presently I became interested in tracing my varying moods, as they had found a record in the heap.
[Illustration: A Handwritten dedication, "To my Dearest Friend" followed by three successive names, two crossed out, then the whole dedication struck out]
Then again, a little essay in gratitude came to hand--
TO PROFESSOR AUGUSTUS FLOOD, Whose Admirable Lectures on Palæontology First turned my Attention to Literature.
There was a tinge of pleasantry in the latter that pleased me very greatly when I wrote it, and I find immediately overlying it another essay in the same line--
To the Latter-day Reviewer, These Pearls.
For some days I was smitten with the idea of dedicating my little booklet to one of my numerous personal antagonists, and conveying some subtly devised insult with an air of magnanimity. I thought, for instance, of Blizzard--
SIR JOSEPH BLIZZARD, The most distinguished, if not the greatest, of contemporary anatomists.
I think it was "X.L.'s" book, _Aut Diabolus aut Nihil_, that set me upon another line. There is, after all, your reader to consider in these matters, your average middle-class person to impress in some way. They say the creature is a snob, and absolutely devoid of any tinge of humour, and I must confess that I more than half believe it. At anyrate, it was that persuasion inspired--