nal negative. If they still yearn to let themselves be _seen_, as
well as _read_, I would suggest that the frontispiece be the one page
in the book to be uncut, so that their readers, should they wish to
peep at the author's physiognomy for curiosity's sake, may--if that
curiosity prove its own punishment--leave those first pages uncut until
the book falls to pieces on the bookshelf. For myself, I hate to read
some beautifully written thought, only to have the author's distinctly
unbeautiful face always protruding between me and my delight--like some
utterance of the commonplace in the middle of a discussion on "souls."

I suppose it is that authors--like everybody else--cannot understand
that how they look to themselves and to those who love them, and so are
used to them, they will not necessarily look to other people, who
merely want to gaze upon their photograph because they cannot look upon
their waxwork. We all get so used to our own blemishes by seeing them
every morning when we brush our hair that we have long since ceased to
regard them seriously. But ten to one a stranger will notice nothing
else. That is always the way of a stranger's regard. But, after all,
to fail to impress someone who knows you and loves you is nothing at
all; to fail, however, to impress someone who yearns to become
acquainted with you, is very often to lose a possible friend. Better a
thousand times that an adoring reader should keep yearning to know what
her favourite author looks like than, having at last satisfied her
curiosity, she should exclaim disappointedly, "_Gosh! To think that he
could look like that!!_"

If an author feels that indeed he must show the world what he looks
like, let him issue to the public merely a "vague impression" of
himself--a Cubist one for preference. A Cubist portrait can look like
anything . . . but to look like anything is infinitely preferable to
looking like _nothing on this earth_, isn't it?

_Seaside Piers_

The only real excitement I can ever perceive about a Seaside Pier is
when the sea washes half of it away. To me, Seaside Piers are the most
deadly things. You pay tuppence to go on them, and you generally stay
on them until you can stay no longer because--well, because you _have_
paid tuppence. Having walked along the dreary length of the tail-end
which joins the shore, there seems really nothing to do at the end of
your journey except to spit over the side. Of course, the