Produced by Al Haines.
This charming chronicle has no plot.
It is an attempt to present a happy, witty simple-minded woman who
attracted love because she gave it out, and tried to make her home a
little well of happiness in the desert of the world. After all most
people live their lives without its incidents forming in any sense a
"plot." However, to tell this sort of story is difficult; the attention
of the reader must be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the
writing, and the publishers believe they have found in Catherine Cotton
a writer with just the right gifts of wit, sympathy, and understanding.
*EXPERIENCE*
_by_
*CATHERINE COTTON*
LONDON 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO LTD
GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND
Copyright
First Impression, June, 1922
Second Impression, November, 1922
Third Impression, January, 1923
Fourth Impression, September, 1923
Fifth Impression, March, 1925
Sixth Impression, April, 1926
Seventh Impression, October, 1927
Eighth Impression, February, 1928
Ninth Impression, October, 1928
Tenth Impression, July, 1929
_Printed in Great Britain_
TO
ARTHUR, CHARLIE, ROSS, ALEC, AND BOB
(Five very gallant gentlemen who gave their lives
for England)
*PREFACE*
It has been said that 'Novelists are the Showmen of life.' Perhaps
because the world has passed through a time of special stress and strain
it has come about that the modern novel is largely concerned with the
complexities of life and is very often an unhappy and a tiring thing to
read.
Yet humour, happiness, and love exist and are just as real as gloom, so
need the 'realism' of a book be called in question because it pictures
pleasant scenes?
For there are still some joyous souls who smile their way through life
because they take its experience with a simplicity that is rarer than it
used to be.
This, then, is the story of a woman whose outlook was a happy one; whose
mind was never rent by any great temptations, and who, because she was
NOT 'misunderstood in early youth,' never struggled for
'self-expression,' but only to express herself (in as many words as
possible!) to the great amusement and uplifting of her family!
For these reasons this book, like that of the immortal Mr Jorrocks,
'does not aspire to the dignity of a novel,' but is just a story--an
April mixture of sun and shadow--as most lives are; a book to read when
you're tired, perhaps, since it tells of love and a home and garden and
such like restful things. And if it makes you smile and sigh at times,
well, maybe, that is because life brings to many of us, especially to
the women folk, very much the same 'experience.'