It is with extreme diffidence that the author presents—but then is any healthy author ever really as modest as he makes himself out in his foreword? Probably not, or there wouldn't be any book. The author, however, is quite conscious of the many defects of these sketches, and only hopes that in book form they will meet with the indulgence which greeted their original appearance. They have been gathered from the pages of Toronto Saturday Night and are here reprinted, through the courtesy of the publisher and editor, with such additions and alterations as have been suggested by the increasing years and wisdom of the writer—and the removal of the censorship. And they are dedicated to those two splendid and long-suffering friends, "Constant Reader" and "Old Subscriber," by their very grateful liegeman, the author.
PETER DONOVAN.
Toronto, Sept. 1920.
Contents
[That Motor Boat of Algie's]
[Aesthetics and Some Tea]
[Beauty in the Bank]
[Koncerning Kosmetics]
[Clurks and Clarks]
[Ventilation]
[City Chickens]
[Porters, Pullmans and Patience]
[Helping Our Friends to Economize]
[Refreshments at Five]
[Manners for the Masses]
[Raiment and Mere Clothes]
[That Fur Coat]
[Spring in the City]
[Moving Day]
[Vacation Vagaries]
[Lawnless Tennis]
[That Glorious First Drive]
[That Awful First Game]
[On Keeping Cool]
[Back to Nature in a Limousine]
[Stringencies and How to Stringe in Them]
[Taming the Furnace]
[Mike]
[Dogs]
[On Being Handy with Tools]
[Bumps and a Brogue]
THAT MOTOR BOAT OF ALGIE'S
That Motor-Boat of Algie's
His name really isn't Algie. It wouldn't do to use his real name—he has a very nice wife, you know. So we shall call him Algie, partly as a disguise, and partly because we wish to be offensive. We want to hurt his feelings. It is our earnest desire that he should read this account and writhe painfully. We claim to be as patient and forgiving as the next one, but there are some subjects—and that motor-boat picnic is one of them. When, in addition to being made sea-sick, being scared into acute heart-disease, and being banged about in a locoed launch like a bean in a coal-scuttle, a gentleman is forced to ruin his second-best pair of—but we anticipate.
For two or three weeks prior to the fatal invitation and the fatal day on which he perpetrated the picnic, Algie had been coming down to the office late every morning—so late in fact that his coming amounted to an afternoon call. Furthermore, his face and shirt bore mysterious smudges of train-oil. And though Algie was never what is known as a "swell dresser," he was always a very neat sort of chap in the matter of his personal adornment.