Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.
| published weekly. | NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1896. | five cents a copy. |
| vol. xviii.—no. 892. | two dollars a year. |
THE MATERIALIZATION OF CHARLES AND MIVANWAY.
BY JEROME K. JEROME.
The fault that most people will find with this story is that it isunconvincing. Its scheme is improbable, its atmosphere artificial. Toconfess that the thing really happened—not as I am about to set itdown, for the pen of the professional writer cannot but adorn andembroider, even to the detriment of his material—is, I am well aware,only an aggravation of my offence; for the facts of life are theimpossibilities of fiction. A truer artist would have left this storyalone, or at most have kept it for the irritation of his private circle.My lower instinct is to make use of it. A very old man told me the tale;he was landlord of the Cromlech Arms, the only inn of a small,rock-sheltered village on the northeast coast of Cornwall, and had beenso for nine-and-forty years. It is called the Cromlech Hotel now, and isunder new management, and during the season some four coach-loads oftourists sit down each day to table d'hôte lunch in the low-ceilingedparlor. But I am speaking of some time ago when the place was a merefishing-harbor, undiscovered by the guide-books.
The old landlord talked, and I harkened, the while we[Pg 106] both sat drinkingthin ale from earthen-ware mu