PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
When Benedick said that he would die a bachelor he did not know, as he observed later, that he would live to be married. In the same way, I have to confess that when in my preface to Windfalls I hinted that it would be the last of these little books, I did not think that there would be another.
Mr. Dent has convinced me of my mistake. This is the fourth collection I have made and, warned of the danger of forecasting the future, I will say no word in prejudice of a fifth. The essays, like those in the previous volumes, have appeared in The Star, many of them also in the Manchester Evening News and some in the Glasgow Citizen.
CONTENTS
[Dream Journeys]
[On Coming Home]
[A Log Fire]
[On Saying "Please"]
[Billitch at Lord's]
[On Shop Windows]
[A Day with the Bees]
[On Shaking Hands]
[On a Finger-Post]
[The Open Window]
[On an Unposted Letter]
[A Note on Dress]
[Farewell to Hampstead]
[On Plagiarism]
[The Case of Dean Inge]
[A Tale of Fleet Street]
[On the Top Note]
[Tea and Mr. Bennett]
[On Buying and Selling]
[On Big Words]
[Do We Buy Books?]
[Other People's Jobs]
[Why I Don't Know]
[On Anti-Climax]
[The Unknown Warrior]
[Naming the Baby]
[The Cult of the Knife and Fork]
[A Soliloquy in a Garden]
[A Night's Lodging]
[Those People Next Door]
[How We Spend Our Time]
[A Sentence of Death]
[On an Elderly Person]
[Taming the Bear]
[Ourselves and Others]
[An Offer of £10,000]
[In a Lumber-Room]
[Our Neighbour the Moon]
[On Smiles]
[When in Rome...]
[The Jests of Chance]
[In Defence of "Skipping"]
[An Old English Town]
[On People with One Idea]
[To an Unknown Artist]
[On Living for Ever]
[On Initials]
[Planting a Spinney]
[On Wearing an Eyeglass]
[A Man and His Watch]
[Youth and Old Age]
[The Golden Age]
[The Top of the Ladder]
[On Faces—Past and Present]
[In Praise of Maiden Aunts]
[October Days]
