This is a collection of stories by Grant Allen, published in various years. The title story is personal. Allen nearly drowned when he fell through the ice while skating as a boy in Canada, and wrote about the experience anonymously for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1892. He claimed to have been "as dead as he ever can be or will be" and that he had no "after death" experiences. This suited his atheistic position, of course. In fact he was not "dead" at all; just unconscious, and he was quickly revived by brandy and massage.