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There was a marvellous range in his interests. He had read much, he improvised magnificently, and there was hardly anything that he could not have done if only but, alas! it is idle mooning in the land of Might-Have-Beens! The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr. Runciman to the pages of The Family Herald.
Also, he has synopsized Bacon's history a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for he hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the world, from his boyhood to his death in old age a history consisting of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens.
He cooked their evening meal in their camp by the wayside and they both ate it in silence. For awhile Rodriguez sat and gazed at the might-have-beens in the camp-fire: and when these began to be hidden by white ash he went to his blankets and slept. And Morano went quietly about the little camp, doing all that needed to be done, with never a word.
This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the rest of that ton of plaster of paris out of which the biographers have built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name, that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all about law and lawyers.
But I looked long at these, and at the tiny slip of blue sky above, and then came home and wrote this story. "Oh, the insufferable eyes of these poor might-have-beens." Every morning of the spring and early summer he had walked down that sun- and shadow-flecked suburban road, and rested on that particular iron chair.
This little speech, uttered by our poor saintly Superior when she was but eight years old, may perhaps give the key to much in her after life; and if we cannot, with an admiring sisterhood, henceforth count this unhappy, soured woman in our catalogue of saints, we will at least grant her a place amongst the great company of "might-have-beens," most inscrutable problems in this puzzling life of ours, and so bid her a not unkindly farewell.
Numerous as are the places now so called, a number more may be reckoned in the illimitable chapter of the might-have-beens; and it is interesting to speculate on the forms which they would have taken, 'si qua fata aspera rupissent. Among these still-born Chesters, Newcastle-upon-Tyne may fairly rank first.
But in a wild country like this one must always be expected to face a certain amount of risk; and it is never worth while to weep over the might-have-beens, or how could one be happy at all?" he said lightly.
But of that there was no fear. So Grandmamma sat and cried a little quietly to herself, for the children's innocent words had roused some sad thoughts, and brought before her some pictures of happy pasts and happy "might-have-beens." "It is strange," she thought to herself, "very strange to think of that we two, old and tired and ready to rest, should be here left behind by them all.
Opening the door at last, we received something the same shock the traveller feels when he encounters a guide-post telling him the next town is half a mile farther on than it was three miles back. But we've not lived forty years without learning to bury our "might-have-beens" with outward composure, whatever the internal commotion.
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