Ah, truly, shades of the prison-house close about us, the new-born things, and all too soon do we forget.  And yet, when we were new-born we did remember other times and places.  We, helpless infants in arms or creeping quadruped-like on the floor, dreamed our dreams of air-flight.  Yes; and we endured the torment and torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrous things.  We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of fear; and memory is experience .

As for myself, at the beginnings of my vocabulary, at so tender a period that I still made hunger noises and sleep noises, yet even then did I know that I had been a star-rover.  Yes, I, whose lips had never lisped the word “king,” remembered that I had once been the son of a king.  More—I remembered that once I had been a slave and a son of a slave, and worn an iron collar round my neck.

Still more.  When I was three, and four, and five years of age, I was not yet I.  I was a mere becoming, a flux of spirit not yet cooled solid in the mould of my particular flesh and time and place.  In that period all that I had ever been in ten thousand lives before strove in me, and troubled the flux of me, in the effort to incorporate itself in me and become me.

Silly, isn’t it?  But remember, my reader, whom I hope to have travel far with me through time and space—remember, please, my reader, that I have thought much on these matters, that through bloody nights and sweats of dark that lasted years-long, I have been alone with my many selves to consult and contemplate my many selves.  I have gone through the hells of all existences to bring you news which you will share with me in a casual comfortable hour over my printed page.

So, to return, I say, during the ages of three and four and five, I was not yet I.  I was merely becoming as I took form in the mould of my body,