Life and Habit and Myself
At the Century Club I was talking with a man who asked me why I did not publish the substance of what I had been saying. I believed he knew me and said:
“Well, you know, there’s Life and Habit.”
He did not seem to rise at all, so I asked him if he had seen the book.
“Seen it?” he answered. “Why, I should think every one has seen Life and Habit: but what’s that got to do with it?”
I said it had taken me so much time lately that I had had none to spare for anything else. Again he did not seem to see the force of the remark and a friend, who was close by, said:
“You know, Butler wrote Life and Habit.”
He would not believe it, and it was only after repeated assurance that he accepted it. It was plain he thought a great deal of Life and Habit and had idealised its author, whom he was disappointed to find so very commonplace a person. Exactly the same thing happened to me with Erewhon. I was glad to find that Life and Habit had made so deep an impression at any rate upon one person.