Dear Jessica:

For a little while like shadows we haveplayed our parts on a shadowy stage, apingthe passions and follies of actual life. Andnow, as the kind authors who gave us beingwithdraw their support and leave us to fadeaway into nothingness, the doubt ariseswhether our little comedy was not all invain. I do not know. A wise poet of thereal world once said that man’s life wasmerely the dream of a shadow, yet somehowmen persuade themselves that their ownpursuits are greatly serious. Was our lifeany less than that, and were not our hopesand sorrows and tremulous joy as full ofmeaning to us as theirs to the creatures whostrut upon the stage of the world? AgainI say, I do not know: Only I am troubledthat so fair an image as yours should proveafter all a dream, a shadow’s dream, andmelt so swiftly away:—

And my last word is a message. He whocreated me would convey in this, my farewellletter, his thanks to the creator ofJessica. He himself has found in our correspondenceonly pleasure, and, as he turnsfrom this romance to other and differentwork of the pen, he hopes that she whomade you will be encouraged by your charmto deal bravely with her imagination andto give the world other romances quite herown and without the alloy of his coarser wit.