The exceptions include you, Uncle Peter, and myself also.
It could not apply in your case, Uncle Peter, because I have known you since we lived together in Baltimore many moons ago, and I realize that the years have only improved you, Uncle Peter, and that to-day you are a bigger shine than you ever were.
One point about my observation which seems to have escaped the eyes of the general public, but which you suggest so delicately in your letter, Uncle Peter, will be found in the beautiful words of the poet who says:
Some advertisement now and then
Is needed by the greatest men!
Don't mention it, Uncle Peter, for what I tell you is confidential, but do you know that my little bunch of remarks, which cost me nothing anyway because I was invited to the banquet, have given me more widespread advertisement than Andy Carnegie can get for eighteen public libraries?
You know, Uncle Peter, there is nothing in the world so easy to make stand up on its hind legs as the general public if you just go after it right.
But the trick is, Uncle Peter, to know what to say and when to say it.
Look at my case and then tell me if it wasn't up to me to emit a rave.
There I was, just about to leave my native land to go to Oxford and become the squeegee professor in the Knowledge Factory and be all swallowed up in the London fog, but nobody seemed to miss me before I went away.
I began to feel lost, lonely and forgotten like a vice-president of the United States.