I was born in Indiana. That was several years ago, and I have since seen a good deal of the world. I was reading in a newspaper the other day of a new film which shows on the screen the innumerable adventures of a book in the making, from the time the manuscript is accepted […]

Birds of a feather flock together, you can tell a dog by its spots, a man is known by the company he keeps–and all that sort of thing. It is quite astonishing that nobody has before been struck by what I have in my eye. People go round all the while writing about Old Greenwich […]

A clerk may look at a celebrity. For a number of years, we, being diligent in our business, stood and waited before kings in a celebrated book shop. Now (like Casanova, retired from the world of our triumphs and adventures) we compose our memoirs. “We know from personal experience that a slight tale, a string […]

Whenever we go to England we learn that we “caun’t” speak the language. We are told very frankly that we can’t. And we very quickly perceive that, whatever it is that we speak, it certainly is not “the language.” Let us consider this matter. A somewhat clever and an amusingly ill-natured English journalist, T. W. […]

Some people say that it is the most awful trial. But it isn’t so at all. One of the most entertaining things that can be done in the world, so full of interesting things, is to go hunting lodgings. Also, it is one of the most enlightening things that can be done, for, pursued with […]

To the best of my knowledge and belief (as a popular phrase has it), I am the only person in the United States who corresponds with a London policeman. About all you know about the London policeman is that he is a trim and well-set-up figure and an efficient-looking officer. When you have asked him […]

The people who (because they think they don’t need to) do not read the “Help Wanted” “ads” in the newspapers really ought to do this, anyway for a week or so in every year. They are the people, above all others, that would be most benefited by this department of journalism. Now, there is nobody […]

A literary adventurer not long since found himself, by one of the exigencies incident to his precarious career, turning over in the process of cataloguing a kind of literature in which up to that time he had been very little read, a public collection of published municipal documents. This gentleman had had a notion for […]

It is a very pleasant thing to go about in the world and see all the people. Among the finest people in the world to talk with are scrubwomen. Bartenders, particularly those in very low places, are not without considerable merit in this respect. Policemen and trolley-car conductors have great social value. Rustic ferry-men are […]

The panorama before his view is the human mind. He panders to its divers follies, consults its varied wisdom. He stands umbrellaless in the rain of all its idiosyncrasies. Why has he not lifted up his voice? He, the book clerk, that lives among countless volumes of confessions! Whose daily task is to wrestle hour […]

I think it was William Hazlitt’s brother who remarked that “no young man thinks he will ever die.” Whoever it was he was a mysterious person who lives for us now in that one enduring observation. That is his “literary remains,” his “complete works.” And many a man has written a good deal more and […]

There is certainly no more grotesque fallacy than that humorously bigoted notion so generally entertained, particularly by our friends of other nations (at any rate, before the war), that the only thing in the world for which we as a people care is success as measured by money. A walk about any day will give […]

Somewhere in the mass of that splendid, highly personal journalism of his, William Hazlitt declares that he was never able to read a book through after thirty. That penetrating man, Samuel Butler, reflecting in his “Note-Books” on “What Audience to Write For,” says: “People between the ages of twenty and thirty read a good deal, […]

There is a good deal to be said about wearing a hat. And yet this humorous custom, this rich topic, of wearing a hat has been sadly neglected, as far as I can make out, by scholars, scientists, poets, composers, and other “smart” people. Man has been variously defined, as the religious animal, and so […]

There are very young, oh absurdly young! reviewers; and there are elderly reviewers, with whiskers. There are also women reviewers. Absurdly young reviewers are inclined to be youthful in their reviews. Elderly reviewers usually have missed fire with their lives, or they wouldn’t still be reviewers. The best sort of a reviewer is the reviewer […]

No reader of The Spectator will have forgotten an article which appeared there some years ago entitled “As to Bears.” Or ever will forget it until his shall be “the shut lid and the granite lip of him who has done with sunsets and skating, and has turned away his face from all manner of […]

Now it’s a funny thing, that, come to think of it. Some folks have questioned whether, the other way round, it could be done in this country at all. It’s a pleasant view anyhow that the matter presents of that curious affair the English character. There is a notion knocking about over here that considerable […]

We have now to record an extraordinary adventure. Our later education was derived in some considerable measure from the writings of Mr. Henry James. This to explain our emotion. We had never expected to behold himself, the illustrious expatriate who had so far enlightened an unkempt mind. But the night before we had been talking […]

George Moore once presented the idea that the only thing of interest and value about the creative art of a woman was the feminine quality of that art. The novels of Jane Austen come readily to mind as an argument in support of this provocative idea. Quite first among their charms, every one will admit, […]

“Lavender, sweet lavender,Who will buy my sweet blooming lavender?Buy it once, you’ll buy it twice,And make your clothes sweet and nice!” She was a wretched-looking creature, with a great basket; and it was so she sang through the street. By this you know where we are, for this is one of the old cries of […]