hey do) unrevised and just as they
assaulted the defenceless reader of the daily prints; and the
other indecorum would be to take fragments of this kind too
gravely, and attempt by more careful disposition of their pallid
members to arrange them into some appearance of painless decease.
As Gilbert Chesterton said (I wish I could say, on a similar
occasion): "Their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue
pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite."

These sketches gave me pain to write; they will give the
judicious patron pain to read; therefore we are quits. I think,
as I look over their slattern paragraphs, of that most tragic
hour--it falls about 4 P. M. in the office of an evening
newspaper--when the unhappy compiler tries to round up the
broodings of the day and still get home in time for supper. 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? In extenuation it may be pleaded that none of them are so
long that they may not be mitigated by an accompanying pipe of
tobacco.

THE AUTHOR.

Roslyn, Long Island,
July, 1920.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface vii

On Making Friends 3

Thoughts on Cider 10

One-Night Stands 18

The Owl Train 25

Safety Pins 29

Confessions of a "Colyumist" 34

Moving 42

Surf Fishing 48

"Idolatry" 52

The First Commencement Address 60

The Downfall of George Snipe 63

Meditations of a Bookseller 66

If Buying a Meal Were Like Buying a House 71

Adventures in High Finance 74

On Visiting Bookshops 78

A Discovery 83

Silas Orrin Howes 91

Joyce Kilmer 97

Tales of Two Cities 109

I. _Philadelphia_:
An Early Train
Ridge Avenue
The University and the Urchin
Pine Street
Pershing in Philadelphia
Fall Fever
Two Days Before Christma