ffred's
nearly-forgotten treasuresO for a miracle to make the gold we squander speak, and tell us what hard work it represents!
———
Few people do more harm than those who lay down a plan of happiness, and expect others to follow it. Procrustes was a mild tyrant to these blundering benefactors to their species.
———
There is some music that is as thorough a charm as the song of nightingales, and there is some music that resembles the butchers' serenade of marrow-bones and cleavers.
While transcribing Morial the Mahatma, by Mabel Collins, I discovered that her father, Mortimer Collins, was also an author. Transmigration, "a fantasy of multiple incarnations of which the middle one is set on a utopian Mars," caught my attention, and I decided to take it on.
Throughout the story, the main character champions the gamut of classic Victorian romantic ideals: Monarchism, anti-Darwinism, Chivalry, etc. etc. And yet, for all that, the author's gentle sense of humor genuinely renders it a guilty pleasure. His style quite reminds me of Edmund Quincy.
The text came from these scans of volumes I, II, and III of the 1874 edition, backed by these scans. I also made use of this scan of the 1883 edition. I corrected any obvious typographical errors, standardized some inconsistent spellings, and updated some obsolete spellings (although I chose to keep a few, notably "personeity" and "offuscated").
So here it is: the master HTML version, the home-brew Kindle version, and the actual Amazon publication.
November 4, 2025