The Seal of Silence: A Novel

Excerpt from The Seal of Silence: A NovelI who write these words am not the author of the book, nor do I come forward now merely to plead for recognition of the merit it seems to me to possess, or to attempt to disarm criticism by admitting defects inevitable in the first work of a young man.For this first work is also the last; its author has passed beyond the voices of praise or blame, and its title, The Seal of Silence, has a pathetic appropriateness to-day which, when he chose it, he was far indeed from foreseeing.My acquaintance with Arthur Reignier Conder lasted less than a year, but I happen to have acted as, so to speak, his literary godfather. We first met m a certain cathedral city in the Easter of 1900; my impression of him was of a young man about twenty-four, tall, fair-haired, with gray-blue eyes, a sensitive humorous mouth, a frank bright expression, a singularly pleasant voice, a quiet and rather diffident manner.He had lately left Worcester College, Oxford, after taking his degree in Literæ Humaniores.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.