_To
My Little Sister
who was born just in time
to know the old, quiet ways of life
in their gentle decline--to
know and to love
them_
[Illustration]
_Contents_
_Page_
Author's Foreword ix
Penguin Persons 1
Spring Comes to Thumping Dick 18
The Passing of the Stage Sundial 33
On Singing Songs with One Finger 41
The Immorality of Shop-windows 46
A Forgotten American Poet 51
New Poetry and the Lingering Line 65
The Lies We Learn in Our Youth 77
The Bad Manners of Polite People 87
On Giving Up Golf Forever 96
"Grape-Vine" Erudition 108
Business Before Grammar 114
Wood Ashes and Progress 118
The Vacant Room in Drama 128
On Giving an Author a Plot 132
The Twilight Veil 136
Spring in the Garden 154
The Bubble, Reputation 168
The Old House on the Bend 180
Concerning Hat-trees 184
The Shrinking of Kingman's Field 189
Mumblety-peg and Middle Age 209
Barber Shops of Yesterday 229
The Button Box 234
Peppermints 239
[Illustration]
_Author's Foreword_
It is not a little unfortunate that no one can attempt the essay form
nowadays, more especially that type of essay which is personal,
reminiscent, "an open letter to whom it may concern," without being
accused of trying to write like Charles Lamb. Of course, if we were
ever accused of succeeding, that would be another story! There is, to
be sure, no doubt that the gentle Elia impressed his form and method
on all English writers who followed him, and still reaches out across
a century to threaten with his high standards those who still venture
into this pleasant and now so neglected field. Such are the rigors of
triumphant gentleness. Still--and he would have been the first to
recognize the fact--it is rather unfair to demand of every essayist
the revelation of a personality like Lamb's. Fundamentally, all
literature, even naturalistic drama, is the revelation of a
personality, a point of view. But it is the peculiar flavor of the
essay that it reveals an author through his chat about himself, his
friends, his memories and fancies, in something of the direct manner
of a conversation or a letter; and he himself feels, in writing, a
delightful sense of intimacy with his future readers. That Lamb was a
master of this art like no other, without a visible or probable rival,
hardly constitutes a reason for denying to less delightful men and
gifted artists the right also to practice it, to put themselves and
their intimate little affairs and idiosyncrasies into direct and
personal touch with such few readers as they may find. For the readers
of his essays are the author's friends in a sense that the readers of
his novels or dissertations, or the witnesses of his plays, can never
be. There will be no story to hold them, no fictional, independent
characters, no ideas nor arguments on high questions of policy. There
will be only a joint interest in the minutiae of life. If I like cats
and snowstorms, and you like cats and snowstorms, we are likely to
come together on that mutual ground, and clasp shadow hands across the
page. But if you do not like cats and snowstorms, why then you will
not like me, and we needn't bore each other, need we?
The little papers in this volume, issued from the peaceful town of
Sewanee atop the Cumberland plateau, between Thumping Dick Hollow and
Little Fiery Gizzard Creek, have been written at various times and
places in the past fifteen years, many of them while I still dwelt in
New York, and babbled o' green fields, many before, and some few
after, the outbreak of the Great War. That War, you will perhaps
discover, finds in them no reflection. It has been consciously
excluded, for though the world can never be the same world again, as
we are in no danger of forgetting, there are some things which even
war and revolution cannot change, such as the memories of our
childhood, the joy of violets in the Spring, the delight in melody,
the humor of small dogs, the coo of babies. I have fancied we are
sometimes by way of forgetting that. At any rate, of such matters, in
hours when he has no thought but to please himself, the essayist
chats, and shall chat in the happy years that are to come again, or
all our bloodshed has been in vain. If, at the same time, he chances
to please an editor also, and then to make a few friends who like what
he likes, smiles sympathetically at what makes him smile, why, that is
clear again!
This author has been fortunate enough to please several editors in the
past, and to all of them, who have given him permission to reprint
such papers in this volume as have appeared in their periodicals, he
extends his gratitude. They are specifically, the editors of _The
Atlantic Monthly_, _Scribner's_, _House and Garden_, _The Dial_,
_Ainslee's_, _The Scrap Book_, _The Boston Transcript_ and _The New
York Tribune_.