Penguin Persons & Peppermints

WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Essay Index Reprint Series
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS FREEPORT, NEW YORK
First Published 1922 Reprinted 1969
STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 8369-1288-8
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 72-93335
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To My Little Sister who was born just in time to know the old, quiet ways of life in their gentle decline—to know and to love them

It is not a little unfortunate that no one can attempt the essay form nowadays, more especially that type of essay which is personal, reminiscent, “an open letter to whom it may concern,” without being accused of trying to write like Charles Lamb. Of course, if we were ever accused of succeeding, that would be another story! There is, to be sure, no doubt that the gentle Elia impressed his form and method on all English writers who followed him, and still reaches out across a century to threaten with his high standards those who still venture into this pleasant and now so neglected field. Such are the rigors of triumphant gentleness. Still—and he would have been the first to recognize the fact—it is rather unfair to demand of every essayist the revelation of a personality like Lamb's. Fundamentally, all literature, even naturalistic drama, is the revelation of a personality, a point of view. But it is the peculiar flavor of the essay that it reveals an author through his chat about himself, his friends, his memories and fancies, in something of the direct manner of a conversation or a letter; and he himself feels, in writing, a delightful sense of intimacy with his future readers. That Lamb was a master of this art like no other, without a visible or probable rival, hardly constitutes a reason for denying to less delightful men and gifted artists the right also to practice it, to put themselves and their intimate little affairs and idiosyncrasies into direct and personal touch with such few readers as they may find. For the readers of his essays are the author's friends in a sense that the readers of his novels or dissertations, or the witnesses of his plays, can never be. There will be no story to hold them, no fictional, independent characters, no ideas nor arguments on high questions of policy. There will be only a joint interest in the minutiæ of life. If I like cats and snowstorms, and you like cats and snowstorms, we are likely to come together on that mutual ground, and clasp shadow hands across the page. But if you do not like cats and snowstorms, why then you will not like me, and we needn't bore each other, need we?