Cargoes for Crusoes

by Grant M. Overton

Cargoes for Crusoes

GRANT OVERTON

By GRANT OVERTON

About Books and Authors

• CARGOES FOR CRUSOES
• AUTHORS OF THE DAY
• AMERICAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENT
• WHEN WINTER COMES TO MAIN STREET
• THE WOMEN WHO MAKE OUR NOVELS
• WHY AUTHORS GO WRONG AND OTHER EXPLANATIONS

Novels

• THE THOUSAND AND FIRST NIGHT
• ISLAND OF THE INNOCENT
• THE ANSWERER
• WORLD WITHOUT END
• MERMAID

Cargoes
for Crusoes

By GRANT OVERTON

New York: D. Appleton & Company
New York: George H. Doran Company
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1924,
BY GRANT OVERTON

First Printing, September, 1924.

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.

Bound in Interlaken-Cloth

“Let’s Give Him a Book.”

“He’s Got a Book.”

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
ALL THOSE WHO, THOUGH HAVING
ONE BOOK, SOMETIMES ENJOY ANOTHER

Preface
Being a True Account of How a Priceless Cargo Was Delivered to a Desert Islander

How that I, Robinson Crusoe, came to be wrecked with others of the ship’s company on a Desert Island, all being lost save my unworthy self, hath in a precise manner been narrated by one D. Defoe in the book he saw fit to entitle with my name; but his ending is indifferent. For novels like Defoe’s must have the Happy Ending, so styled. Yet is the truth often happier far than fiction. Being no hand to invent a tale, I am content to set down in this place events as I humbly took part in them.

Let me declare, then, that here on my Desert Island I for long suffered great loneliness and consequent distress of soul. This went on many days. Howbeit, while sunk very low in my spiritual state and with expectation nearly gone, a huge ship passing near labored painfully with a storm by the mercy of God being compelled to throw overboard—or, as they say at sea, to jettison—the greater part of her cargo. And being thus lightened she stood away from the Island and went on her course safely. The same storm cast upon the shore the rich treasure wherewith she had been laden, so many wooden boxes or cases, packed tightly and well-lined, which for the most part were washed up undamaged and, within, scarcely dampened except it may be for an inch or two. Coming down to the shore the morning after I stood transfixed with astonishment at the sight of something lying on the sand. It was a book.

When I had a little recovered from my amaze, my joy and ecstasy knew no way to communicate itself, and almost immediately, my eye falling on the cases strewn along the beach, I capered with delight. I brake open the boxes, one after the other fast as I could work. All, all, were brimmed with the newest books!

Since that day I have not lacked instruction and entertainment, and deem that Providence, at trifling expense to the maritime insurers, hath rescued me from boredom forevermore. And this I deem the only rescue worth a fingersnap in this life of ours, and one that a great majority of people do never accomplish. My days and nights have been and yet are filled with most various delights, my walks are taken with a great company of authors and my conversations are held with them.

With such profit and satisfaction do I read that more than once, being sighted by a vessel which then stood by to take me off my Island, I have waved the sailors to proceed without me, which they have done with doubt and difficulty; yet finally I have convinced them of my meaning, they proceeding with their voyage, I with mine....

Contents

CHAPTER		PAGE
1	THE KNIGHTLINESS OF PHILIP GIBBS	[15]
2	THE TRAIL BLAZERS	[28]
3	THE ART OF MELVILLE DAVISSON POST	[41]
4	JEFFERY FARNOL’S GESTES	[60]
5	ADULTS PLEASE SKIP	[83]
6	THE TWENTIETH CENTURY GOTHIC OF ALDOUS HUXLEY	[97]
7	IN EVERY HOME: A CHAPTER FOR WOMEN	[114]
8	A GREAT IMPERSONATION BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM	[126]
9	G. STANLEY HALL, PSYCHOLOGIST	[143]
10	THE MODE IN NEW FICTION	[167]
11	COSMO HAMILTON’S UNWRITTEN HISTORY	[182]
12	LEST THEY FORGET	[197]
13	THAT LITERARY WANDERER, E. V. LUCAS	[212]
14	AMERICAN HISTORY IN FICTION	[232]
15	THE FIRESIDE THEATRE	[252]
16	A REASONABLE VIEW OF MICHAEL ARLEN	[266]
17	PALETTES AND PATTERNS IN PROSE AND POETRY	[277]
18	COMING!—COURTNEY RYLEY COOPER—COMING!	[290]
19	EDITH WHARTON’S OLD NEW YORK	[304]
20	NOT FOUND ELSEWHERE	[314]
21	FRANK L. PACKARD UNLOCKS A BOOK	[330]
22	ALL CREEDS AND NONE	[348]
23	J. C. SNAITH AND GEORGE GIBBS	[363]
24	MARY JOHNSTON’S ADVENTURE	[375]
	INDEX OF PRICES	[389]
	INDEX	[403]

Portraits

	PAGE
PHILIP GIBBS	[16]
MELVILLE DAVISSON POST	[48]
JEFFERY FARNOL	[64]
SUSAN ERTZ	[176]
COSMO HAMILTON	[184]
E. V. LUCAS	[224]
EMERSON HOUGH	[234]
MICHAEL ARLEN	[272]
MARY JOHNSTON	[384]

Cargoes for Crusoes