I remember some friends of mine telling me how they went down to Horsham, in Sussex, to see Hilaire Belloc. They found him in the cellar, seated astraddle of a gigantic wine-cask just arrived from France, about to proceed upon the delicate (and congenial) task of bottling the wine. He greeted them like jovial Silenus, […]

After Simmons had been married two years he began to feel as though he needed a night off. But he hesitated to mention the fact, for he knew his wife would feel hurt to think that he could dream of an evening spent elsewhere than in their cosy sitting room. However, there were no two […]

“ZUM ANDENKEN” The first night we sat down at the inn table for supper I lost my heart to Ingo! Ingo was just ten years old. He wore a little sailor suit of blue and white striped linen; his short trousers showed chubby brown calves above his white socks; his round golden head cropped close […]

A LITTLE-KNOWN TOWN OF UNEARTHLY BEAUTY Slowly, reluctantly (rather like a vers libre poem) the quaint little train comes to a stand. Along the station platform each of the fiacre drivers seizes a large dinner-bell and tries to outring the others. You step from the railway carriage–and instantly the hellish din of those droschky bells […]

We used to call him Rhubarb, by reason of his long russet beard, which we imagined trailing in the prescriptions as he compounded them, imparting a special potency. He was a little German druggist–Deutsche Apotheker–and his real name was Friedrich Wilhelm Maximilian Schulz. The village of Kings is tucked away in Long Island, in the […]

M’Phee is the most tidy of chief engineers. Ifthe leg of a cockroach gets into one of hisslide-valves the whole ship knows it, and halfthe ship has to clean up the mess. –RUDYARD KIPLING. The next time the Cunard Company commissions a new liner I wish they would sign on Joseph Conrad as captain, Rudyard […]

[Denis Dulcet, brother of the well-known poet Dunraven Dulcet and the extremely well-known literary agent Dove Dulcet, was for many years the head reader for a large publishing house. It was my good fortune to know him intimately, and when he could be severed from his innumerable manuscripts, which accompanied him everywhere, even in bed, […]

There is a small black notebook into which I look once or twice a year to refresh my memory of a carnal and spiritual pilgrimage to Edinburgh, made with Mifflin McGill (upon whose head be peace) in the summer of 1911. It is a testament of light-hearted youth, savoury with the unindentured joys of twenty-one […]

He always lost his temper when the foreign mail came in. Sitting in his private room, which overlooked a space of gardens where bright red and yellow flowers were planted in rhomboids, triangles, parallelograms, and other stiff and ugly figures, he would glance hastily through the papers and magazines. He was familiar with several foreign […]

The big room was very still. Outside, beneath a thin, cold drizzle, the first tinge of green showed on the broad lawn. The crocuses were beginning to thrust their spears through the sodden mold. One of the long French windows stood ajar, and in the air that slipped through was a clean, moist whiff of […]

Rupert Brooke had the oldest pith of England in his fibre. He was born of East Anglia, the original vein of English blood. Ruddy skin, golden-brown hair, blue eyes, are the stamp of the Angles. Walsingham, in Norfolk, was the home of the family. His father was a master at Rugby; his grandfather a canon […]

Away with the stupid adage about a man beingas old as his arteries! He is as old as hiscalves–his garteries…. —Meditations of Andrew McGill. “There was fine walking on the hills in the direction of the sea.” This heart-stirring statement, which I find in an account of the life of William and Dorothy Wordsworth when […]

There is nothing more pathetic than the case of the author who is the victim of a supposedly critical essay. You hold him in the hollow of your hand. You may praise him for his humour when he wants to be considered a serious and saturnine dog. You may extol his songs of war and […]

Kenneth Stockton was a man of letters, and correspondingly poor. He was the literary editor of a leading metropolitan daily; but this job only netted him fifty dollars a week, and he was lucky to get that much. The owner of the paper was powerfully in favour of having the reviews done by the sporting […]

The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of man’s life. What a mystery lies in doors! No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. The plumber may actually have […]

I A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that one should have some excuse for being away from the office on a working afternoon. September sunshine and trembling blue air are not sufficient reasons, it seems. Therefore, if any one should brutally ask what I was doing the other day dangling down Chestnut […]

There are a number of empty apartments in the suburbs of our mind that we shall be glad to rent to any well-behaved ideas. These apartments (unfurnished) all have southern exposure and are reasonably well lighted. They have emergency exits. We prefer middle-aged, reasonable ideas that have outgrown the diseases of infancy. No ideas need […]

We were giving a young English poet a taste of Philadelphia, trying to show him one or two of the simple beauties that make life agreeable to us. Having just been photographed, he was in high good humor. “What a pity,” he said, “that you in America have no literature that reflects the amazing energy, […]

I. IN PRAISE OF BOOBS Dear Sir–What is a Boob? Will you please discuss the subject a little? Perhaps I’m a boobfor asking–but I’d like to know. CYNTHIA. BE FRIENDLY WITH BOOBS The Boob, my dear Cynthia, is Nature’s device for mitigating the quaintly blended infelicities of existence. Never be too bitter about the Boob. […]

In these days when the streets are so perilous, every man who goes about the city ought to be sure that his pockets are in good order, so that when he is run down by a roaring motor-truck the police will have no trouble in identifying him and communicating with his creditors. I have always […]