“Pipefuls” is apropos of the brevity of the sketches in this collection compiled from the New York Evening Post, the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger and other journals. The author characteristically declares: “These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits.... And yet perhaps the will-to-live is in them, for are they not a naked exhibit of the antics a man will commit in order to earn a living?” (Preface) In one of the sketches, Confessions of a “colyumist,” in which he expatiates on the task of conducting a newspaper column, he thus parodies Wordsworth:
“The meanest paragraph that blows will give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for sneers.”
The illustrations are from drawings by Walter Jack Duncan.
+ Booklist 17:146 Ja ’21
“Short crisp amusing papers with the mellowness and pungency which are characteristic of this fluent author’s work.” Margaret Ashmun
+ Bookm 52:348 D ’20 30w
“Mr Morley is like a painter who converts the commonplace into a work of art.”
+ Bookm 52:368 Ja ’21 30w